3. Having no power to move one's self or itself; inert.
Matter, being impotent, sluggish, and inactive, hath no power to stir or move itself.
Woodward.
And the sluggish land slumbers in utter neglect.
Longfellow. 4. Characteristic of a sluggard; dull; stupid; tame; simple. [R.] "So sluggish a conceit." Milton.
Syn. — Inert; idle; lazy; slothful; indolent; dronish; slow; dull; drowsy; inactive. See Inert.
— Slug"gish*ly, adv. — Slug"gish*ness, n.
Sluggy
(Slug"gy) a. Sluggish. [Obs.] Chaucer.
Slug-horn
(Slug"-horn`) a. An erroneous form of the Scotch word slughorne, or sloggorne, meaning
slogan.
Slugs
(Slugs) n. pl. (Mining) Half-roasted ore.
Slugworm
(Slug"worm`) n. (Zoöl.) Any caterpillar which has the general appearance of a slug, as do
those of certain moths belonging to Limacodes and allied genera, and those of certain sawflies.
Sluice
(Sluice) n. [OF. escluse, F. écluse, LL. exclusa, sclusa, from L. excludere, exclusum, to shut
out: cf. D. sluis sluice, from the Old French. See Exclude.]
1. An artifical passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, as in a mill stream, for stopping or regulating
the flow; also, a water gate or flood gate.
2. Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
Each sluice of affluent fortune opened soon.
Harte.
This home familiarity . . . opens the sluices of sensibility.
I. Taylor. 3. The stream flowing through a flood gate.
4. (Mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, — used for washing auriferous earth.
Sluice gate, the sliding gate of a sluice.
Sluice
(Sluice), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sluiced ; p. pr. & vb. n. Sluicing ]
1. To emit by, or as by, flood gates. [R.] Milton.
2. To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice; as, to sluice meadows. Howitt.
He dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water.
De Quincey. 3. To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice; as, to sluice eart or gold dust in mining.
