Word.ws English Dictionary

slow-walk

slow-walk verb: to delay a request or command, to drag one's feet, to stall, to obstruct, to drag out a process.

Verb (1)

slow-walk (third-person singular simple present slow-walks, present participle slow-walking, simple past and past participle slow-walked)

  1. (especially, idiomatic, transitive) To delay a request or command, to drag one's feet, to stall, to obstruct, to drag out a process.
    • many of the men were simply standing around and were purposely ‘slow-walking’ the project […] to stretch out the term of employment.1973, testimony in United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit case (regarding labor dispute)
    • Since assuming office, Trump has issued many private demands to aides that have either been slow-walked or altogether ignored.2019 May 15, Elaina Plott, “Ignoring Trump’s Orders, Hoping He’ll Forget”, in The Atlantic

Verb (2)

slow-walk (third-person singular simple present slow-walks, present participle slow-walking, simple past and past participle slow-walked)

  1. (transitive) To punish, to chastise.

Synonyms of slow-walk

Forms of slow-walk

third-person singular presentslow-walks
present participleslow-walking
past participleslow-walked
pastslow-walked
alternative formslow walk

Origin of slow-walk

Attested since 1973 in Southern dialects of American English; prominent since the late 1990s. Thought by William Safire to derive from a Tennessee term for the walking gait of the Tennessee Walking Horse, which is generally called "flat walk", but sometimes a "slow walk".

Attested since 1962 in Southern (North and South Carolina) dialects of American English; of unknown origin.

Questions about slow-walk

What does slow-walk mean?
Slow-walk means to delay a request or command, to drag one's feet, to stall, to obstruct, to drag out a process.
What part of speech is slow-walk?
Slow-walk is a verb.
What is the past tense of slow-walk?
The past tense of slow-walk is slow-walked.

Words near slow-walk in the dictionary

  1. slow-roll
  2. slow-rolled
  3. slow-rolling
  4. slow-rolls
  5. slow-up
  6. slow-walk
  7. slow-walked
  8. slow-walking
  9. slow-walks
  10. slow-wave
  11. slow-witted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slow-walk (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-slow-walk.ogg.

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