as in slug
a lazy person
tried to wake up the sluggards who were still sleeping at that late hour
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in slothful
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of sluggard
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 19 July 2019
Clearly, supervision at your job is lax, and your sluggard classmate is taking advantage of that.
—Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2017
Slug was – is – a variant on sluggard, which was actually used as a surname for some time, apparently.
—Ruth Walker, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Sep. 2017
French workers, whom the British like to dismiss as holiday-hogging sluggards, are more productive than the British.
—The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
Moneyshow, Forbes, 5 Mar. 2021
Noun
Scar then proceeds to desolate the kingdom, with the help of hyenas, while Simba, in exile, grows up to become a pleasure-hunting, grub-eating sluggard.
—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 19 July 2019
Clearly, supervision at your job is lax, and your sluggard classmate is taking advantage of that.
—Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2017
Slug was – is – a variant on sluggard, which was actually used as a surname for some time, apparently.
—Ruth Walker, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Sep. 2017
French workers, whom the British like to dismiss as holiday-hogging sluggards, are more productive than the British.
—The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
Adjective
The stock really has not done much of anything in the last five years, the stock following a similar sluggard pattern of the company’s revenue line.
—Moneyshow, Forbes, 5 Mar. 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for sluggard
Noun
-
Coffee grounds are also often used to deter slugs and snails, reduce weeds without chemicals, and even repel neighborhood strays.—
Lauren Landers,
The Spruce,
21 Jan. 2026
-
Garden snakes have important roles in your landscape, eating insects and invertebrates such as slugs and providing food for birds of prey such as hawks and owls.—
Arricca Elin SanSone,
Southern Living,
19 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
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
Noun
-
Coffee grounds are also often used to deter slugs and snails, reduce weeds without chemicals, and even repel neighborhood strays.—
Lauren Landers,
The Spruce,
21 Jan. 2026
-
The stacked transporter will inch along at a careful snail’s pace of about 1 mile per hour, according to NASA.—
Denise Chow,
NBC news,
17 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
White cast-iron chairs are perfectly positioned on a terrace to catch Stromboli’s volcanic smoke-show, and occasional fiery belch, in the distance over a lazy cocktail.—
Rosalyn Wikeley,
Condé Nast Traveler,
10 Jan. 2026
-
Suzy Welch, a best-selling author and professor of management practice at New York University, hit back against those who brand the young generation lazy by reminiscing on her career journey.—
Emma Burleigh,
Fortune,
9 Jan. 2026
Noun
-
One of Iran’s most recent threats came from Mohammad-Javad Larijani, a former senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, during the 12 Day War last year, threatening a drone strike against the president at Mar-a-Lago.—
Brady Knox,
The Washington Examiner,
21 Jan. 2026
-
The vastness was staggering (this is apparent in the drone shot of us in this Instagram post below, taken by our trip photographer James Roh).—
Maya Silver,
Outside,
20 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
Sixty-five-year-old Jep Gambardella, indolent and disenchanted, his eyes permanently imbued with gin and tonic, watches this parade of hollow, doomed, powerful yet depressed humanity.—
Leo Barraclough,
Variety,
4 Aug. 2025
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The weather was springtime perfect and we were lulled by the splash of water and feeling indolent from a good meal and more than a few glasses of wine.—
Keith Pandolfi,
The Enquirer,
2 July 2025
Noun
-
His discoveries promise to upset the gaming tables of every school of thought that wagers on new and untested art for idlers’ rewards: the love of novelty, the will to make or unmake reputations, the wish to be hip or au courant.—
Mark Greif,
Harper's Magazine,
26 July 2024
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Their name exudes the essence of an idler and slacker, but women’s loafers themselves are quite the opposite.—
Gaby Keiderling,
Harper's BAZAAR,
19 Jan. 2023
Adjective
-
Why didn’t Tania just get one of her fellow Council wokesters to hire her shiftless, entitled kin?—
Howie Carr,
Boston Herald,
28 Sep. 2025
-
The film, like How to Train Your Dragon, is about a shiftless youngster (Lilo, a Hawaiian girl who has been acting out since the death of her parents) bonding with a fantasy creature (Stitch, a blue alien experiment designed as a weapon of destruction).—
David Sims,
The Atlantic,
13 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Sluggard.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sluggard. Accessed 23 Jan. 2026.
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