Word.ws English Dictionary

sluggard

sluggard noun: a person who is lazy, stupid, or idle by habit.

Noun

sluggard (plural sluggards)

  1. A person who is lazy, stupid, or idle by habit.
    • He tooke his rouſe with ſtopes of Rhenniſh wine / So kindly yeſternight to Bruno's health, / That all this day the ſluggard kéepes his bed.1589–1592 (date written), Ch[ristopher] Mar[lowe], The Tragicall Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. […], London: […] Iohn Wright, […], published 1616 (1631 reprint), →OCLC, signature...
  2. A person slow to begin necessary work, a slothful person.
    • But while these sluggards slept on, on dry land, snoring peacefully beside their owners, the oldest boat was up at the crack as old folk often are, and was therefore the first craft to move across the unfrozen lake.1981, Salman Rushdie, chapter 1, in Midnight's Children
  3. A fearful or cowardly person, a poltroon.

sluggard meaning in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Punjabi

sluggard in Tamil

lazy or idle person
சோம்பேறி cōmpēṟi

sluggard in Telugu

lazy or idle person
సోమరి sōmari

sluggard in Kannada

sluggard, idler, lazybones
ಸೋಮಾರಿ sōmāri

sluggard in Punjabi

a sluggard; a lazy or sluggish person
ਜਿੱਲ੍ਹਾ jillhā, ਜਿੱਲ੍ਹੀ jillhī
More languagesFewer languages
sluggard in Persian
لتنبر latanbar

Forms of sluggard

pluralsluggards

Origin of sluggard

From Middle English slogarde, probably ultimately of Old Norse origin. Equivalent to slug + -ard (“pejorative agent suffix”).

Words formed from sluggard

Questions about sluggard

What does sluggard mean?
Sluggard means a person who is lazy, stupid, or idle by habit.
What is sluggard in Tamil?
Sluggard in Tamil is சோம்பேறி (cōmpēṟi). See Sluggard meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sluggard?
Sluggard is a noun.
What is the plural of sluggard?
The plural of sluggard is sluggards.

Words near sluggard in the dictionary

  1. slugfests
  2. slugga
  3. sluggabed
  4. sluggabeds
  5. sluggable
  6. sluggard
  7. sluggardise
  8. sluggardised
  9. sluggardises
  10. sluggardising
  11. sluggardize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sluggard (page history and authors); ಸೋಮಾರಿ (Kannada) (page history and authors); ਜਿੱਲ੍ਹਾ (Punjabi) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sluggard.wav.

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