sloom

/sluːm/

sloom noun: a gentle sleep; slumber.

Noun

sloom (plural slooms)

A gentle sleep; slumber.

Verb

sloom (third-person singular simple present slooms, present participle slooming, simple past and past participle sloomed)

(Scotland) To sleep lightly, to doze, to nod; to be half-asleep.
- The squire sloomed and slept in his chair; and finally, after a cup of tea, went to bed.1886, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Squire of Sandal-Side A Pastoral Romance
- To his castle’s portal, / At the morning gloaming, / Bore they all the mortal / From the battle’s foaming, / Of the white bannered warrior knight, / Cold in his armor slooming!a. 1853, Jane Ermina Locke, “Elia”, in The Recalled: In Voices of the Past, and Poems of the Ideal, James Munroe and Company, published 1854, page 193
To soften or rot with damp. (of plants or soil)
- He adds, that one hundred bolls, or fifty quarters of wheat may be thrashed in a day of eight hours, unless the grain has been sloomed or mildewed; […]a. 1807, unidentified young farmer, letter to his father, printed in Edinburgh Farmers’ Magazine 1807, reprinted in The Farmer’s Register, Volume 7, Number 9 (1839 September 30), page 540
- […] no other spot over their whole pastured offered as much verdure at this time as these seemingly sloomed places.1824 August, “Remarks on Captian Napier's Essay on Store-Farming”, in The Farmer’s Magazine, Volume XXV, Archibald Constable and Company (publishers), page 329

Examples of sloom in a sentence

Then the doctor was slooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness.1900, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Maid of Maiden lane, Dodd, Mead and Company, page 181:
Potter sloomed in the arms of the chair.1936, Esmond Quinterley, Ushering Interlude, The Fortune Press, page 66:
He lay slooming half-asleep, half-awake, thinking about Tuesday afternoon.2001, Gemma O'Connor, Walking on Water, Berkley Publishing Group (2003), page 205
It must be explained, however, that in the latter case the “slooming” of the crop had an injurious effect on its yield; […]c. 1854, Alexander J. Main, “Experiments with Special Manures”, in Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, W....

Forms of sloom

Noun
plural	slooms
alternative form	sloum
Verb
third-person singular present	slooms
present participle	slooming
past participle	sloomed
past	sloomed
alternative form	sleam

Origin of sloom

From Middle English *sloume, sloumbe, slume, from Old English sluma (“sleep, slumber”), from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”). Compare slumber and Dutch sloom.

From Middle English slumen, slummen, from Old English *slūmian (“to slumber, sleep gently”), from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”).

Words formed from sloom

sloomy

Words that rhyme with sloom

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sloom

What does sloom mean?: Sloom means a gentle sleep; slumber.
How do you use sloom in a sentence?: Then the doctor was slooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness.
What part of speech is sloom?: Sloom can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sloom?: Sloom is pronounced /sluːm/.
What is the plural of sloom?: The plural of sloom is slooms.

Words near sloom in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: sloom (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sloom.wav.

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