Literary notes about Sluggish (AI summary)
The term "sluggish" is used in literature to evoke a sense of deliberate, almost ponderous movement and to convey states of lethargy or stagnation. Its application ranges from the literal depiction of slow-flowing water bodies—such as bayous, streams, or canals, which create an atmosphere of stillness and decay ([1], [2], [3])—to metaphorical portrayals of human behavior and mental activity, suggesting torpor, weariness, or a lack of spirited energy ([4], [5], [6]). Through these varied contexts, authors utilize "sluggish" to subtly imprint mood and character, transforming both the physical landscape and the inner lives of their figures into reflections of inertia and lethargy ([7], [8], [9]).
- Bayou Bœuf is a sluggish, winding stream—one of those stagnant bodies of water common in that region, setting back from Red River.
— from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - On the farther bank from me the trees rose thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black shadows on the sluggish, shallow water.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - “I see,” said the Haunted Man, with something of interest in his manner,—“I see an old moss-covered manse beside a sluggish, flowing river.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed from fire to sluggish ice in a moment.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Free, bold, living thought is searching and dominating; for an indolent, sluggish mind it is intolerable.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - “Some are blacker than the sluggish bear.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper - Or, from thy grass-grown battlement, May trace, in undulating line, The sluggish mazes of the Tyne.
— from Marmion: A Tale Of Flodden Field by Walter Scott - To the dullest peasant, as he sits sluggish, overtoiled, by his evening hearth, one idea has come: that of Chateaus burnt; of Chateaus combustible.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
