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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sloth.

Laziness; slowness of mind; disinclination to action or labour; a feeling combining indifference and lethargy; a dragging idleness.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/sləʊθ/Received-Pronunciation/slɒθ/Received-Pronunciation/slɔθ/General-American/slɑθ/cot-caught-merger

  1. Laziness; slowness of mind; disinclination to action or labour; a feeling combining indifference and lethargy; a dragging idleness.

    uncountable
    Hot summer days inspire a sense of sloth in me.

  2. Any animal in the suborder Folivora. Any member of species of the families Choloepodidae and Bradypodidae of herbivorous, arboreal South American mammals, noted for its slowness and inactivity.

    countable · especially · uncountable

  3. Any animal in the suborder Folivora. Any of the extinct group of ground sloths.

    countable · uncountable

  4. A group of bears.

    collective · countable · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English slouthe, slewthe (“laziness”), from Old English slǣwþ (“sloth, indolence, laziness, inertness, torpor”), from Proto-West Germanic *slaiwiþu, from Proto-Germanic *slaiwiþō (“slowness, lateness”), equivalent to slow + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognate with Scots sleuth (“sloth, slowness”).

verb/sləʊθ/Received-Pronunciation/slɒθ/Received-Pronunciation/slɔθ/General-American/slɑθ/cot-caught-merger

  1. To be idle; to idle (away time).

    intransitive · obsolete · transitive
    He has been slothing this whole weekend.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English slouthe, slewthe (“laziness”), from Old English slǣwþ (“sloth, indolence, laziness, inertness, torpor”), from Proto-West Germanic *slaiwiþu, from Proto-Germanic *slaiwiþō (“slowness, lateness”), equivalent to slow + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognate with Scots sleuth (“sloth, slowness”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.