Word.ws English Dictionary

sloyd

/slɔɪd/

sloyd noun: a Scandinavian system of handicraft-based education that emphasizes the importance of practical, hands-on work to develop cognitive and problem-solving skills. In particular, it is often associated with woodworking and carving, but can include other crafts as well.

Noun

sloyd (countable and uncountable, plural sloyds)

  1. A Scandinavian system of handicraft-based education that emphasizes the importance of practical, hands-on work to develop cognitive and problem-solving skills. In particular, it is often associated with woodworking and carving, but can include other crafts as well.
    • He asked what exactly was the position given to the "sloyds" (handicrafts) in teaching …1947, Unesco, International Bureau of Education, Proceedings and Recommendations, Digitized edition, published 2009
  2. A knife for carving.
    • The sloyd knife, Fig. 84, is a tool likely to be misused in the hands of small children, but when sharp and in strong hands, has many valuable uses.1910, William Noyes, Handwork in Wood, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2007
    • … woodcarvers' knives or sloyds, chisels and plane irons, …1933 June, W. Clyde Lammey, “Tricks of Sharpening Knives”, in Popular Mechanics, volume 59, number 6, page 951

Forms of sloyd

pluralsloyds
alternative formslojd
alternative formslöjd

Origin of sloyd

Borrowed from Swedish slöjd (“handicraft, handiwork, skills”). Doublet of sleight.

Questions about sloyd

What does sloyd mean?
Sloyd means a Scandinavian system of handicraft-based education that emphasizes the importance of practical, hands-on work to develop cognitive and problem-solving skills. In particular, it is often associated with woodworking and carving, but can include other crafts as well.
What part of speech is sloyd?
Sloyd is a noun.
How do you pronounce sloyd?
Sloyd is pronounced /slɔɪd/.
What is the plural of sloyd?
The plural of sloyd is sloyds.

Words near sloyd in the dictionary

  1. slowwitted
  2. slowworm
  3. slowworms
  4. Sloyan
  5. Sloyans
  6. sloyd
  7. sloyds
  8. SLP
  9. slph
  10. SLPI
  11. SLPIs

Source and license

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

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