PLODS Synonyms: 159 Similar and Opposite Words

plods

verb

present tense third-person singular of plod

as in strives

to devote serious and sustained effort plodded night and day to get the assignment done

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in stumbles

to proceed or act clumsily or ineffectually oxen plodding through deep mud

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in drags

to move slowly plodded reluctantly off to work

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in shuffles

to move heavily or clumsily wayfarers plodding across the sandy wastes

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for plods

Verb

In so doing, the tradition could achieve for ASL what the word of the year strives to achieve for English.

— New York Times, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2026
Said soup is being attended to by at least four cooks, as Hal (with helpful coaching by an off-camera Kate) strives to explain himself to Grace back at the embassy, and then the two of them work to get Eidra on-side.

— Sophie Brookover, Vulture, 16 Oct. 2026

Definition of strives

Verb

Even as Heath stumbles his way through the lyrics, the audience respectfully claps along to the beat.

— Hershal Pandya, Vulture, 21 Oct. 2026
Lizard Music follows a boy (Theo Clark Leber) left to his own devices who stumbles upon a secret late-night broadcast of lizards playing otherworldly music, and a hidden door to the extraordinary swings open.

— Anthony D'Alessandro, Deadline, 19 Oct. 2026

Definition of stumbles

Verb

Try to keep that in mind the next time your kid drags you to some terrible Star Wars thing that nobody asked for.

— Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 23 Oct. 2026
The deadpan family comedy follows a 63-year-old man who drags nine relatives on a one-day tour of nine temples after a fortune teller warns that his mother will soon die.

— Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 21 Oct. 2026

Definition of drags

Verb

As energy supply struggles to keep pace with demand, those delays have drawn political attention and, finally, action, including significant legislation passed at the state level and a new bipartisan permitting reform bill proposed in the Senate.

— Dr. Sarah Kapnick, semafor.com, 20 Oct. 2026
Toxic haze has covered parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for weeks as Jakarta struggles to contain fires that have scorched large tracts of Borneo and Sumatra, with the smoke drifting across the region.

— Lim Hui Jie, CNBC, 20 Oct. 2026

Definition of struggles

Verb

Six months later, the war trudges on, indirectly ensnaring much of the world by severely disrupting global trade.

— Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, 27 Aug. 2026
Enola dutifully trudges between clues and possibilities, shuffling through crime scenes and racing around shady spaces, all of this much more paint-by-numbers than connect-the-dots.

— Kate Erbland, IndieWire, 30 June 2026

Definition of trudges

Verb

There’s also a less than 10% chance of showers, if one of the hurricanes crawls farther up the coast, according to Wofford.

— Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times, 24 Sep. 2026
Hairy-nosed wombat births are hard to spot, as after about a 30-day pregnancy, the joey crawls into its mother’s pouch.

— Devoun Cetoute, Miami Herald, 16 Aug. 2026

Definition of crawls

Verb

His creator, an unnamed basket-weaver (Peter Dinklage), braided him as a mate for a lonely virgin, a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who stomps around her rustic village smelling like sushi and tossing her head back in an Eliza Doolittle guffaw.

— Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 2026
At one point Evans stomps in to a Fielder secondary interview to try to stop it.

— Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 16 Oct. 2026

Definition of stomps

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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ploddingly

plods

plop

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“Plods.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/plods. Accessed 27 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of plods

verb

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