Sluggish means moving with heavy, tired lack of energy. A sluggish river, sluggish sales, feel sluggish.
It describes movement that ought to be quicker, which is why it works for rivers, markets, engines and people. Of an economy it is the standard word for weak growth. Note slug, the animal, from which it comes — the word is a comparison with the slowest thing in the garden.
1adjectivesluggishMoving with heavy, tired lack of energy.
“I always feel sluggish after a big lunch.”
sluggish is a quality of slowness.
Proto-Indo-European
*sliǵ-ōn
Middle English
slugge — lazy person", also "sloth, slothfulness
English
slug
English, today
sluggish
Built from
From slug + -ish. slug Originally referred to a slow, lazy person, from Middle English slugge (“lazy person", also "sloth, slothfulness”), probably of either Old English - or Old Norse - origin; perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sliǵ-ōn, from sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”) or otherwise from the root of Old Norse slókr (“lazy person, oaf”), whence Icelandic slókur (“laziness”). Compare nrn slug (“lazy, slothful, sluggish”), dialectal Norwegian slugg (“a large, heavy body”), sluggje (“heavy, slow person”), Danish slog (“rascal, rogue”). Compare also Dutch slak (“snail, slug”). a doublet of slotch. The sense of a hitchhiking commuter is from the sense of a counterfeit bus token. Bus operators considered sluggers to be cheating as if they were using counterfeit tokens.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA