as in lazy
not easily aroused to action or work
his overly lax managerial style has resulted in a department that is slothful and unproductive
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Recent Examples of slothful
Soviet Russia, too, experienced periodic panics about slothful bureaucrats impeding the dictatorship of the proletariat.
—
Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2025
At our test track, the buzzy little SUV needed a slothful 9.2 seconds to hit 60 mph.
—Drew Dorian, Car and Driver, 23 Dec. 2022
Procrastination can be slothful or prudent, a vice or a virtue, depending on your habits and the tasks at hand.
—Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 16 Dec. 2021
Selfish, feckless, self-deluded, weak-willed yet childishly willful, manipulative, slothful, and mendacious: How can such a despicable character also be such a likable one?
—Sigrid Nunez, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
After releasing 12 albums in 13 months, Twin Cities guitarist Cory Wong will end his momentarily slothful ways and drop just his second album this year.
—Jon Bream, Star Tribune, 11 May 2021
At the same time, others construed even the most slothful forms of idleness as a bold resistance to modernity’s greatest ills.
—Ingrid Nelson, The Conversation, 19 Mar. 2021
The pilfered offspring return with the raiders to their nests, then hatch and grow up to become live-in slaves, tasked with the feeding and care of their slothful masters and their masters’ brood.
—Brendan Borrell, Discover Magazine, 10 Apr. 2013
Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2025
At our test track, the buzzy little SUV needed a slothful 9.2 seconds to hit 60 mph.
—Drew Dorian, Car and Driver, 23 Dec. 2022
Procrastination can be slothful or prudent, a vice or a virtue, depending on your habits and the tasks at hand.
—Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 16 Dec. 2021
Selfish, feckless, self-deluded, weak-willed yet childishly willful, manipulative, slothful, and mendacious: How can such a despicable character also be such a likable one?
—Sigrid Nunez, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
After releasing 12 albums in 13 months, Twin Cities guitarist Cory Wong will end his momentarily slothful ways and drop just his second album this year.
—Jon Bream, Star Tribune, 11 May 2021
At the same time, others construed even the most slothful forms of idleness as a bold resistance to modernity’s greatest ills.
—Ingrid Nelson, The Conversation, 19 Mar. 2021
The pilfered offspring return with the raiders to their nests, then hatch and grow up to become live-in slaves, tasked with the feeding and care of their slothful masters and their masters’ brood.
—Brendan Borrell, Discover Magazine, 10 Apr. 2013
Recent Examples of Synonyms for slothful
Adjective
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This dreamy weather makes December through April the best time for spending lazy hours on some of Jamaica's best beaches.—
Carley Rojas Avila,
Travel + Leisure,
30 Jan. 2026
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There are lazy ways to do this, and there are more robust ways to do so.—
Lance Eliot,
Forbes.com,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
Kaiser nurses statewide began an indefinite strike Monday, restarting picket lines that went idle after a five-day work stoppage in October 2025.—
Paul Sisson,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
27 Jan. 2026
-
With burly melancholy, Wong plays Ah Tseng, a Chinese migrant worker employed — with his young nephews — in the Rock Springs coal mines, though introduced on an idle day off in their makeshift camp.—
Guy Lodge,
Variety,
26 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Slothful.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/slothful. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
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