Slow Meaning

/sləʊ/
A1

Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

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adjTaking a long time to move or go a short distance, or to perform an action; not quick in motion; proceeding at a low speed.

adjNot happening in a short time; spread over a comparatively long time.

Your watch is ten minutes slow.
Business is so slow these days.
Though the doctor did his best, the patient's recovery was slow.
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
Because of the heavy rain, the car's speed was very ____ on the highway.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The traffic was so ____ during rush hour that it took us over an hour to drive five miles.

From Middle English slaw, slow, from Old English slāw (“lazy; inert, slow”), from Proto-West Germanic *slaiw, from Proto-Germanic *slaiwaz (“blunt; dull; exhausted, faint, sluggish, weak, weary; listless, torpid; dim-witted, slow; lazy, slack”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *sleyH-u- (“bad”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch slee, sleeuw (“cramped, stiff; blunt; sour”), Danish sløv (“blunt; dull; apathetic, lethargic, listless, sluggish, torpid; drowsy”), Icelandic sljór (“dim-witted; blunt; jaded”), Norwegian Nynorsk sljo, slø, sløv (“blunt; weak; lazy”), Swedish slö (“dull; lazy, lethargic, slow, sluggish”).

"Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, she said in mild and slowest Spanish, "Senor, I buried him;" then paused, struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and cringing suddenly, leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, "I buried him, my life, my soul!"" — 1854, Herman Melville, “The Encantadas”, in Putnam's Magazine:
"Dotcom mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations." — 2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
"Theſe changes in the Heav’ns, though ſlow, produc’d / Like change on Sea and Land, ſideral blaſt, / Vapour, and Miſt, and Exhalation hot, / Corrupt and Peſtilent: […]" — 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC, signature [Mm3], verso, lines 692–695:
"Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems—surgical foam, a thermal gel depot, a microcapsule or biodegradable polymer beads." — 2013 May–June, Charles T. Ambrose, “Alzheimer’s Disease”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 200:
"As of the current patch, Luke’s crouching Medium Punch has been nerfed. It will now have a larger hurtbox, in addition to having a slower recovery when the attack misses." — 2024 February 27, Rishov Mukherjee, “Street Fighter 6 update 1.11 patch notes: JP, Luke nerfs, Ryu buff, & more”, in Dexerto:

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CEFR Practice Quiz
Because of the heavy rain, the car's speed was very ____ on the highway.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The traffic was so ____ during rush hour that it took us over an hour to drive five miles.

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