English

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, obsolete) 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 (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 978-0-515-13597-8, page 205:

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

2. (of plants or soil) To soften or rot with damp.
   • 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, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• Dictionary of the Scots Language, “sloom”

Anagrams

• looms
• slo-mo

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sloːm/
• Rhymes: -oːm

Adjective

sloom ‎(comparative slomer, superlative sloomst)

1. sluggish, lifeless

Inflection