Word.ws English Dictionary

slinking

slinking is the present participle and gerund of slink.

Meaning of slink

Verb

slink (third-person singular simple present slinks, present participle slinking, simple past and past participle slunk or slinked or (uncommon) slank)

  1. (intransitive) To sneak about furtively.
    • As we do turn our backs
      From our companion thrown into his grave,
      So his familiars to his buried fortunes
      Slink all away, leave their false vows with him,
      Like empty purses pick’d; and his poor self,
      A dedicated beggar to the air,
      With his disease of all-shunn’d poverty,
      Walks, like contempt, alone.c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  2. (ambitransitive) To give birth to an animal prematurely.
    • a cow that slinks her calf

See all 8 meanings of slink

Noun

slinking (plural slinkings)

  1. The act of one who slinks.
    • [A]t midnight, after wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I slunk to my bed.1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “”, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 428

Forms of slinking

pluralslinkings

Questions about slinking

What does slinking mean?
Slinking means the act of one who slinks.
What is slinking the present participle and gerund of?
Slinking is the present participle and gerund of slink.
What part of speech is slinking?
Slinking is a noun.
What is the plural of slinking?
The plural of slinking is slinkings.

Words near slinking in the dictionary

  1. slinkier
  2. slinkies
  3. slinkiest
  4. slinkily
  5. slinkiness
  6. slinking
  7. slinkingly
  8. slinkings
  9. slinks
  10. slinkskin
  11. slinkskins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slinking (page history and authors); slink (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “slinking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/slinking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.