sluggish
/ˈslʌɡɪʃ
/adjective
1Slow-moving or inactive: a sluggish stream...
- Cape clawless otters spend most of their active time in water - especially in quiet ponds, marshes, and sluggish type streams.
- Anywhere a track runs down to the shore will do; park the car and watch egrets flapping lazily across the fat and sluggish stream.
- I always wondered why no one crossed via the Rio Grande, a sluggish stream when I passed over it.
Synonyms
inactive, quiet, slow, slow-moving, slack, flat, depressed, stagnant, static
1.1Lacking energy or alertness: Alex woke late feeling tired and sluggish...
- My introspection loses a lot of its working energy and becomes sluggish, gloomy, self-nagging and self-doubting.
- If you're sluggish, pump quick energy into your system by eating simple carbohydrates.
- Simplistically speaking, ginseng calms hyper people and gives sluggish people energy.
Synonyms
lethargic, listless, lacking in energy, unenergetic, lifeless, inert, inactive, slow, torpid, dull, languid, apathetic, passive, unresponsive, weary, tired, fatigued, sleepy, half asleep, drowsy, heavy-eyed, enervated, somnolent;
lazy, idle, indolent, slothful, sluggardly;
phlegmatic, bovine;
Medicine asthenic, neurasthenic
informal dozy, dopey, yawny
North American informal logy
archaic lymphatic
1.2Slow to respond or make progress: the car had been sluggish all morning...
- Engines usually idle slower and are sluggish to respond until they warm up.
- But the sluggish global economy has led many foreign firms to slow overseas expansion, offsetting some of that this year, analysts said.
- The Fed is predicted to respond to the more sluggish economy by lowering rates.
Derivatives
sluggishly
/ adverb ...- The game opened very sluggishly with both sides guilty of poor finishing and it was only in the ninth minute that the scoreboard first saw some activity.
- Europe has also maintained its prosperity, and although its economies are growing sluggishly, they are growing.
- Touch it and it breaks up, rolls sluggishly away in pieces, like mercury.
sluggishness
/ noun ...- But sometimes fatigue and sluggishness are caused by an underactive thyroid and these external forces simply exacerbate an already stressed thyroid gland.
- Earth's mass, moreover, measures Earth's inertia or sluggishness if we tried to stop or change its movement through space.
- Stopping caffeine suddenly, however, can cause sluggishness, fatigue, headache and grumpiness.
Synonyms
lethargy, inertia, listlessness, lack of energy, lifelessness, inactivity, inaction, slowness, languor, languidness, torpor, torpidity, dullness, heaviness, apathy, passivity, weariness, tiredness, lassitude, fatigue, sleepiness, drowsiness, enervation, somnolence, laziness, idleness, indolence, sloth, slothfulness;
phlegm;
Medicine asthenia, neurasthenia, anergia
informal doziness, dopeyness
rare hebetude
lack of activity, quietness, slowness, slackness, flatness, stagnation
Origin
Late Middle English: from the noun slug1 or the verb slug (see sluggard) + -ish1.