Sluggish

How to spell sluggish

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sluggish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sluggish mean?

1. adjectiveSlow-moving, lacking energy, or operating below normal speed.

Sluggish in a sentence

• The laptop felt sluggish after months without an update.

• A heavy lunch left him sluggish for the rest of the afternoon.

Where does sluggish come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grew out of the noun 'slug', which in late medieval English meant a slow or lazy person before it was ever attached to the slimy garden mollusc. That noun is probably related to Scandinavian dialect words such as Norwegian 'slugg', meaning a heavy, slow body, hinting at a northern origin. By the late 1300s and 1400s English speakers added the common adjective ending '-ish', meaning 'having the quality of', to produce 'sluggish', literally 'behaving like a slug'. The sense has stayed remarkably steady: anything slow, dull, or lacking vigour, whether a person, a market, an engine, or a river. The familiar relatives 'sluggard' (a habitually lazy person) and the plain noun 'slug' share the same root, and the doubled 'g' before '-ish' is the small spelling trap that catches writers who expect a single consonant.

How the word is built

• slug (slow-moving creature / lazy person)
• -g- (doubled consonant)
• -ish (adjective suffix: having the quality of)