sloth

• WordNet 3.6
  • n sloth apathy and inactivity in the practice of virtue (personified as one of the deadly sins)
  • n sloth any of several slow-moving arboreal mammals of South America and Central America; they hang from branches back downward and feed on leaves and fruits
  • n sloth a disinclination to work or exert yourself
  • ***

• Interesting fact: The sloth moves so slowly that green algae grows in the grooves of their hair
• • Sloth (Zoöl) Any one of several species of arboreal edentates constituting the family Bradypodidæ, and the suborder Tardigrada. They have long exserted limbs and long prehensile claws. Both jaws are furnished with teeth (see Illust. of Edentata), and the ears and tail are rudimentary. They inhabit South and Central America and Mexico.
  • Sloth Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness. "They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth .""Sloth , like rust, consumes faster than labor wears."
  • Sloth Slowness; tardiness. "These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor
    This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome."
  • v. i Sloth To be idle.
  • ***

• Interesting fact: It takes a sloth up to six days to digest the food it eats
• • n sloth Slowness; tardiness.
  • n sloth Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; habitual indolence; laziness; idleness.
  • n sloth A company: said of bears.
  • n sloth A South American tardigrade edentate mammal of the family Bradypodidæ: so called from their slow and apparently awkward or clumsy movements. The slowness of their motions on the ground is the necessary consequence of their disproportioned structure, and particularly of the fact that the feet exhibit a conformation resembling that of clubfoot in man—a disposition of the carpal and tarsal joints highly useful in climbing. Sloths live on trees, and never remove from one until they have stripped it of every leaf. They are helpless when on the ground, and seem at home only on trees, suspended beneath the branches, along which they are sometimes observed to travel from tree to tree with considerable celerity. The female produces a single young one at a birth, which she carries about with her until it is able to climb. Sloths are confined to the wooded regions of tropical America, extending northward into Mexico. At least 12 species are described, but the true number is fewer. All have three toes on the hind feet, but some have only two on the fore feet, whence the obvious distinction of three-toed and two-toed sloths (a distinction even more strongly marked in the anatomy of these animals) warranted a division of the family into bradypods (Bradypodinæ) and cholopodines (Cholopodinæ). Most sloths belong to the former group, and these have the general name ai. The best-known of these is the collared three-toed sloth, Bradypus tridactylus or torquatus, with a sort of mane. The unau or two-toed sloth, Cholopus didactylus, inhabits Brazil; it is entirely covered with long coarse woolly hair. (See cut under Cholopus.) A second and quite distinct species of this genus, C. hoffmanni, inhabits Central America. (See Tardigrada, 1.) The name is apparently a translation of the Portuguese word preguiça (Latin pigritia), slowness, slothfulness. See the quotation.
  • n sloth One of the gigantic fossil gravigrade edentates, as a megatherium or mylodon. See cut under Mylodon.
  • n sloth Synonyms Indolence, inertness, torpor, lumpishness. See idle.
  • sloth To be idle or slothful.
  • sloth To delay.
  • n sloth A Middle English form of sleuth.
  • ***

• Interesting fact: The Seven Deadly Sins are lust, pride, anger, envy, sloth, avarice and gluttony.
• • n Sloth slōth or sloth laziness, sluggishness: a sluggish arboreal animal of tropical America, of two genera (Cholœpus, the two-toed sloth, and Bradypus, the three-toed sloth)
  • ***

• John Milton

  

  “Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace.”
• William Ellery Channing

  

  “Natural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life.”
• Benjamin Franklin

  

  “Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.”
• Horace

  

  “You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.”
• Proverb

  

  “Sloth is the key to poverty.”
• Portuguese Proverb

  

  “A busy mother makes slothful daughters.”

In literature:

In poetry:

In news:

In science: