Word.ws English Dictionary

sluggishly

sluggishly adverb: in a sluggish manner; responding or moving slowly.

Adverb

sluggishly (comparative more sluggishly, superlative most sluggishly)

  1. In a sluggish manner; responding or moving slowly.
    • It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind[.]1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 145
    • She was not bound in any other way and she lay quiet, her body moving sluggishly with the swaying of the car.1953, Ian Fleming, “Black Hare and Grey Hound”, in Casino Royale, London: Pan Books, published 1955, page 107

Forms of sluggishly

comparativemore sluggishly
superlativemost sluggishly

Origin of sluggishly

From sluggish + -ly.

Questions about sluggishly

What does sluggishly mean?
Sluggishly means in a sluggish manner; responding or moving slowly.
What part of speech is sluggishly?
Sluggishly is an adverb.

Words near sluggishly in the dictionary

  1. sluggish
  2. sluggish cognitive tempo
  3. sluggish schizophrenia
  4. sluggisher
  5. sluggishest
  6. sluggishly
  7. sluggishness
  8. sluggishnesses
  9. sluggos
  10. sluggy
  11. slughorn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sluggishly (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)-Flame, not lame-sluggishly.wav.

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