sloom

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sluːm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːm

Etymology 1

From Middle English *sloume, sloumbe, slume, from Old English slūma (“sleep, slumber”), from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”). Compare slumber and Dutch sloom.

Alternative forms

• sloum

Noun

sloom (plural slooms)

1. A gentle sleep; slumber.

Derived terms

• sloomy

Etymology 2

From Middle English slumen, slummen, from Old English *slūmian (“to slumber, sleep gently”), from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”).

Alternative forms

• sloum, sleam

Verb

sloom (third-person singular simple present slooms, present participle slooming, simple past and past participle sloomed)

1. (Scotland) To sleep lightly, to doze, to nod; to be half-asleep.
   • 1886, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Squire of Sandal-Side A Pastoral Romance:

     The squire sloomed and slept in his chair; and finally, after a cup of tea, went to bed.

   • a. 1853, Jane Ermina Locke, “Elia”, in The Recalled: In Voices of the Past, and Poems of the Ideal, James Munroe and Company, published 1854, page 193:

     To his castle’s portal, / At the morning gloaming, / Bore they all the mortal / From the battle’s foaming, / Of the white bannered warrior knight, / Cold in his armor slooming!

   • 1900, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Maid of Maiden lane, Dodd, Mead and Company, page 181:

     Then the doctor was slooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness.

   • 1936, Esmond Quinterley, Ushering Interlude, The Fortune Press, page 66:

     The afternoon sun painted amber patterns on the Turkey red hearthrug: the only splash of colour in the dun room. Potter sloomed in the arms of the chair.

   • 2001, Gemma O'Connor, Walking on Water, Berkley Publishing Group (2003), →ISBN, page 205:

     He lay slooming half-asleep, half-awake, thinking about Tuesday afternoon.

2. To soften or rot with damp. (of plants or soil)
   • a. 1807, unidentified young farmer, letter to his father, printed in Edinburgh Farmers’ Magazine 1807, reprinted in The Farmer’s Register, Volume 7, Number 9 (1839 September 30), page 540:

     He adds, that one hundred bolls, or fifty quarters of wheat may be thrashed in a day of eight hours, unless the grain has been sloomed or mildewed; […]

   • 1824 August, “Remarks on Captian Napier's Essay on Store-Farming”, in The Farmer’s Magazine, Volume XXV, Archibald Constable and Company (publishers), page 329:

     […] no other spot over their whole pastured offered as much verdure at this time as these seemingly sloomed places.

   • c. 1854, Alexander J. Main, “Experiments with Special Manures”, in Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, W. Blackwood & Sons (1855), page 17:

     It must be explained, however, that in the latter case the “slooming” of the crop had an injurious effect on its yield; […]

References

• Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish language (1867)
• “sloom”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• Dictionary of the Scots Language, “sloom”

Anagrams

• slo-mo, osmol, slomo, slo mo, Olmos, mools, looms

Dutch

Etymology

Uncertain; first attested in the late nineteenth century. Ostensibly a variant of loom (“(pleasantly) lazy”), perhaps influenced by words pertaining to slowness and sluggishness with initial sl- such as slungel, slenteren, slak and sloffen.

Note however the fixed expression slome duikelaar, which contains some of the earliest attestations of this word and derives from the pseudonym Sjloume Duikelaar, a late eighteenth-century author from Amsterdam writing in Yiddish. It is uncertain if the adaptation of the name Sjloume to slome is influenced by the prior existence of this word, or if this word in fact derives from the pseudonym.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sloːm/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -oːm

Adjective

sloom (comparative slomer, superlative sloomst)

1. sluggish, slow, lifeless

Declension

Declension of sloom
uninflected	sloom
inflected	slome
comparative	slomer
		positive	comparative	superlative
predicative/adverbial		sloom	slomer	het sloomst het sloomste
indefinite	m./f. sing.	slome	slomere	sloomste
	n. sing.	sloom	slomer	sloomste
	plural	slome	slomere	sloomste
definite		slome	slomere	sloomste
partitive		slooms	slomers	—

Derived terms

• slome duikelaar
• sloomheid
• sloompie
• sloompjes

 

References

• van der Sijs, Nicoline, editor (2010), “sloom”, in Etymologiebank, Meertens Institute