variants or pokey
pokier; pokiest
1
: small and cramped
2
3
: annoyingly slow
pokily adverb
pokiness noun

Examples of poky in a Sentence

frustrated with the poky traffic during rush hour
Recent Examples on the Web These scruffy, poky green invaders have taken over much of the Colorado Basin’s riversides, aided by the unnatural stability left by upstream dams that tamed floods. Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 30 June 2023 The small but mighty design, which is about the same size as a two-door Mini Cooper, will be able to navigate narrow city streets sans emissions and park in even the pokiest spots. Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 13 June 2023 She's also preserved its pacing, a poky YA meander that betrays the phantom impression of chapter breaks and a plot perhaps better suited to daily school bus rides than a single auditorium sitting. A.a. Dowd, Chron, 27 Apr. 2023 This fourth generation of the Sienna is offered solely as a hybrid, with front- and all-wheel drive variants sharing the same 245-hp rating, which has proven to be on the poky side in our testing. Drew Dorian, Car and Driver, 15 Apr. 2023 The devices' poky processors and laggy touchscreen keyboards are best suited for short annotations or looking up the name of a book or author—not for writing anything longer than a sentence or two, and certainly not for taking notes or jotting down idle thoughts. Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 16 Jan. 2023 Small, poky hairs line its stem. Kiona N. Smith, Forbes, 17 Apr. 2022 Base powertrain is pretty poky, buzzy engine sounds under heavy throttle, not as fuel efficient in our testing as last year's model. Car and Driver, 22 Feb. 2023 At Justice, he was assigned to the Bureau of Investigation, then a relatively poky subdepartment known to the public, if it was known at all, for sniffing out violations of the 1910 Mann Act. Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2022 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'poky.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

poke entry 2

First Known Use

1828, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of poky was in 1828

Dictionary Entries Near poky

Cite this Entry

“Poky.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poky. Accessed 25 Sep. 2023.

Kids Definition

poky

adjective
variants or pokey
pokier; pokiest
1
: being small and cramped
a poky room
2
: so slow as to be annoying
pokiness noun
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