shallow

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“
The whole man was neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away.

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Definitions (23)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. adjective Measuring little from bottom to top or surface; lacking physical depth.
  2. adjective Lacking depth of intellect, emotion, or knowledge: "This is a shallow parody of America” (Lloyd Rose).
  3. adjective Marked by insufficient inhalation of air; weak: shallow respirations.
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

narrow ·  rocky ·  empty ·  circular ·  irregular ·  deep ·  muddy ·  slow

Used in the same contextWord Family

shallow:   shallower
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English schalowe.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from ME, shalow, schalowe, shallow, prob. literally ‘sloping, shelving,’ for *schelowe, from Anglo-Saxon *sceolh (in comp. scelg-, sceol-, scul-, scyl-), sloping, oblique, squint (found only in comp. scelg-ēgede, sceol-ēgede, scul-ēgede, scyl-ēgede, scyl-eágede, sceol-ēge, sceol-īge, squint-eyed), = Middle Dutch schelwe, scheel, Dutch scheel = Middle Low German schēl = Old High German scelah (scelh-, scelaw-), Middle High German schelch, schel (schelh-, schelw-), German scheel, sloping, crooked, squint, = Icelandic skjālgr, oblique, wry, squint (as a noun, applied to the crescent moon, to a fish, and as a nickname of a person), = Swedish dial, skjalg, oblique, wry, crooked (not found in Gothic (Moesogothic)); perhaps, with a formative guttural, from a base *skel = Gr, σκολιός crooked, wry, akin to σκαληνός, uneven, scalene, σκελλός, crook-legged: see scoliosis, scalene. The sense ‘shallow’ appears only in English The English forms are somewhat irregular, the Middle English forms shalow, schalowe being associated with other forms of Scand, origin, schald, schold, etc., early modern English shold, English shoal, Scots shaul, shallow, which, together with the related verbs shail and shelve, exhibit variations of the vowel, as well as terminal variations due to the orig. guttural. See shoal, shail, shelve, shelf.
  2. from shallow, a. Cf. shoal, v, and shelve, v.
  3. Cf. shallow.
 

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/ˈʃæloʊ/
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