different between sloom vs spoom

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /slu?m/
• Rhymes: -u?m

Etymology 1

From Middle English *sloume, sloumbe, slume, from Old English sl?ma (“sleep, slumber”), from Proto-Germanic *sl?m- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”). Compare slumber and Dutch sloom.

Alternative forms

• sloum

Noun

sloom (plural slooms)

1. A gentle sleep; slumber.

Derived terms

• sloomy

Etymology 2

From Middle English slumen, slummen, from Old English *sl?mian (“to slumber, sleep gently”), from Proto-Germanic *sl?m- (“to be slack, loose, or limp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“limp, flabby”).

Alternative forms

• sloum, sleam

Verb

sloom (third-person singular simple present slooms, present participle slooming, simple past and past participle sloomed)

1. (Scotland, obsolete) To sleep lightly, to doze, to nod; to be half-asleep.
   • a. 1853, Jane Ermina Locke, "Elia", in The Recalled: In Voices of the Past, and Poems of the Ideal, James Munroe and Company (1854), page 193:

     To his castle’s portal, / At the morning gloaming, / Bore they all the mortal / From the battle’s foaming, / Of the white bannered warrior knight, / Cold in his armor slooming!

   • 1900, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Maid of Maiden lane, Dodd, Mead and Company, page 181:

     Then the doctor was slooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness.

   • 1936, Esmond Quinterley, Ushering Interlude,^[1] The Fortune Press, page 66:

     The afternoon sun painted amber patterns on the Turkey red hearthrug: the only splash of colour in the dun room. Potter sloomed in the arms of the chair.

   • 2001, Gemma O'Connor, Walking on Water,^[2][3] Berkley Publishing Group (2003), ?ISBN, page 205:

     He lay slooming half-asleep, half-awake, thinking about Tuesday afternoon.

2. (of plants or soil) To soften or rot with damp.
   • a. 1807, unidentified young farmer, letter to his father, printed in Edinburgh Farmers’ Magazine 1807, reprinted in The Farmer’s Register, Volume 7, Number 9 (1839 September 30), page 540:

     He adds, that one hundred bolls, or fifty quarters of wheat may be thrashed in a day of eight hours, unless the grain has been sloomed or mildewed; […]

   • 1824 August, “Remarks on Captian Napier's Essay on Store-Farming”, in The Farmer’s Magazine, Volume XXV, Archibald Constable and Company (publishers), page 329:

     […] no other spot over their whole pastured offered as much verdure at this time as these seemingly sloomed places.

   • c. 1854, Alexander J. Main, “Experiments with Special Manures”, in Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, W. Blackwood & Sons (1855), page 17:

     It must be explained, however, that in the latter case the “slooming” of the crop had an injurious effect on its yield; […]

References

• Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish language (1867) [4]
• sloom in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• Dictionary of the Scots Language, “sloom”

Anagrams

• looms, mools, osmol, slo mo, slo-mo, slomo

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /slo?m/
• Rhymes: -o?m

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Adjective

sloom (comparative slomer, superlative sloomst)

1. sluggish, lifeless

Inflection

English

Alternative forms

• spoon

Etymology

Probably a variant of spume (“foam”).

Verb

spoom (third-person singular simple present spooms, present participle spooming, simple past and past participle spoomed)

1. (nautical) To sail briskly with the wind astern, with or without sails hoisted.
   • 17th century: Samuel Pepys

     We might have spooned before the wind as well as they.

   • 17th century: John Dryden

     When virtue spooms before a prosperous gale, / My heaving wishes help to fill the sail.

Noun

spoom (plural spooms)

1. A sorbet containing fruit juice