sludge
/slʌd͡ʒ/
sludge noun: solids separated from suspension in a liquid. Also the ellipsis of sludge metal.
Noun (1)
sludge (countable and uncountable, plural sludges)
- Solids separated from suspension in a liquid.
- Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale.[…]Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28
- A residual semi-solid material left from industrial, water treatment, or wastewater treatment processes.
- A sediment of accumulated minerals in a steam boiler.
- A mass of small pieces of ice on the surface of a water body.
- Institutional policies that introduce tedium and inefficiency in processes.
- In the 2008 best seller Nudge, the legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein and the economist Richard H. Thaler marshaled behavioral-science research to show how small tweaks could help us make better choices. An updated version of the book includes a section on what they called “sludge”—tortuous...[2025 June 29, Chris Colin, “That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.”, in The Atlantic, retrieved 29 Jun 2025, Ideas
Verb
sludge (third-person singular simple present sludges, present participle sludging, simple past and past participle sludged)
Noun (2) capitalized: SLUDGE
SLUDGE
- An acronym used to help remember the common symptoms of certain affections of a cholinergic toxidrome: salivation, lacrimation, urination, defecation, gastrointestinal upset, emesis.
- Synonyms:
- DUMBELS
Also used as
sludge is also the ellipsis of sludge metal.
sludge meaning in Bengali, Nepali and Arabic
sludge in Bengali
- স্লাজ
sludge in Nepali
- स्लज
sludge in Arabic
- residual material from a process
- حَمَأ ḥamaʔ, حَمأَة
- sediment of minerals in a steam boiler
- رُسَابَة rusāba
Examples of sludge in a sentence
- Filamentous bacteria may cause the bulking of activated sludge.
- Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.
- Stink smiled, before letting the last sludge of his volcanic gloop slip down his throat.
Synonyms of sludge
Forms of sludge
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sludges |
| alternative Northern England Scotland | slutch |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | sludges |
| present participle | sludging |
| past participle | sludged |
| past | sludged |
Origin of sludge
From Middle English slugge, sluche (“mud, mire”), probably an alteration of Middle English sliche, slicche ("mud, slush, tar"; whence Modern English slitch), from Old English *sliċ, from Proto-West Germanic *sliki, *slīk, from Proto-Germanic *slikiz, *slīką (“mud, slush”). Cognate with Dutch slijk, German Schlick. Compare also slush.
Words formed from sludge
Phrases with sludge
Words that rhyme with sludge
8 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about sludge
- What does sludge mean?
- Sludge means solids separated from suspension in a liquid.
- What is sludge in Bengali?
- Sludge in Bengali is স্লাজ. See Sludge meaning in Bengali.
- What part of speech is sludge?
- Sludge can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce sludge?
- Sludge is pronounced /slʌd͡ʒ/.
- What is the plural of sludge?
- The plural of sludge is sludges.
Words near sludge in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sludge (page history and authors); SLUDGE (page history and authors); sludge (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sludge (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sludge.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-sludge.wav.
Cite this entry: “sludge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sludge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.