tardigrade means sluggish; moving slowly. It carries an Arena rating of 1417, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, tardigrade ranks #783 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #819 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say, #1,206 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #4,294 of 17,163 for Funniest Words.
tardigrade is pronounced /ˈtɑɹdɪˌɡɹeɪd/.
Why “tardigrade” is a great word
Tardigrade denotes moving or progressing slowly; it is also the name for a microscopic, water-dwelling animal of extraordinary resilience. From Latin tardigradus (“slowly stepping”), from tardus (“slow”) + gradior (“step, walk”), the name Tardigrada was applied to the animal phylum in the 1770s. Unlike “sloth”—a specific, furry mammal—or “lethargic”—a state of drowsy inertia—“tardigrade” names both a deliberate pace and the creature that embodies it. It is the glacier’s imperceptible advance, the hour-hand’s patient circuit, and the microscopic animal curled in cryptobiosis, surviving vacuum and radiation. A testament that the slowest things often outlast everything.
Etymology
From Latin tardigradus (“slowly stepping”), from tardus (“slow”) + gradior (“step, walk”), equivalent to Latin tardus + -i- + -grade.
adj
- Sluggish; moving slowly.e.g.“Each tendril ending in a perfect claw, / Obeys the whole routine of Nature's law; / Transforms each sinus to a sylvan shade, / Though p'rhaps its force is rather tardigrade.” — 1850, Joses Badcock, “Botany; or, Phytology”, in Poems, volume 1, page 67:
noun
- A member of the animal phylum Tardigrada.
- A sloth, a neotropical mammal of suborder Folivora (syn. Tardigrada).
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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