• (RP) IPA: /sləʊθ/, /slɒθ/
• (GA) IPA: /slɔθ/
• (cot-caught, Canada) IPA: /slɑθ/
• (New Zealand) IPA: /slɒθ/

sloth

1. (uncountable) Laziness; slowness in the mindset; disinclination to action or labour.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 10”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     [They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth.

   • Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears.

2. (countable) A herbivorous, arboreal South American mammal of the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, noted for its slowness and inactivity.
3. (rare) A collective term for a group of bears.

• slowth

• French: paresse
• German: Trägheit, Faulheit, Müßiggang
• Italian: pigrizia, (deadly sin) accidia
• Portuguese: preguiça
• Russian: лень
• Spanish: pereza

• French: paresseux, aï
• German: Faultier
• Italian: bradipo
• Portuguese: bicho-preguiça, preguiça
• Russian: лени́вец
• Spanish: perezoso, (Venezuela) pereza

sloth (sloths, present participle slothing; past and past participle slothed)

1. (obsolete, intransitive, transitive) To be idle; to idle (away time).
   • 1676, John Bunyan, The Strait Gate, or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven, London: Francis Smith, p. 69,

     […] the most of professors are for imbezzeling, mispending and slothing away their time, their talents, their opportunities to do good in […]

   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, p. 2,

     That you endeavour carefully to please your Lady, Master or Mistress, be faithful, diligent and submissive to them, encline not to sloth or laze in bed, but rise early in a morning.