tardigrade TAHR-di-greyd, adjective:
1. Slow in pace or movement.
2. Belonging or pertaining to the phylum Tardigrada.noun:
1. Also called bear animalcule, water bear. Any microscopic, chiefly herbivorous invertebrate of the phylum Tardigrada, living in water, on mosses, lichens, etc.The days were long and boring as we walked a continuous almost tardigrade pace around several large buildings, again with empty carbines.
— Stafford O. Chenevert, Amber Waves of Grain…the soldiers were struggling and fighting their way after them, in such tardigrade fashion as their hoof-shaped shoes would allow—impeded, but not very resolutely attacked, by the people.
— George Eliot, RomolaHe rolls tardigrade, to a stop on a shoulder, stooped in sand, in its pretense as it doesn’t exist and there’s only desert…
— Joshua Cohen, WitzRelated to the common word tardy, tardigrade comes from the Latin word tardigradus meaning “slow-paced.”
On the heels of my previous vocabulary post, this is not what tardigrade means in my head.
It means ‘movement via time traveling police box.’