sludge
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The precipitate produced by sewage treatment.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sluhjIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈslʌdʒ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The precipitate produced by sewage treatment
A residual semi-solid material left from industrial, water treatment, or wastewater treatment processes.
Solids separated from suspension in a liquid.
A sediment of accumulated minerals in a steam boiler.
A mass of small pieces of ice on the surface of a water body.
verb
intransitive
To slop or drip slowly.
intransitiveinformal
To slump or slouch.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The precipitate produced by sewage treatment
Used this way, sludge is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use sludge
- “The wastewater treatment plant processes raw sewage into clean water and sludge.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.