shallow

Pluralshallows

Formsshallows, shallowing, shallowed

1. 1
   adjective

   Having little depth; significantly less deep from top to bottom than it is wide.

   The stream is shallow enough to wade across in summer.

   She arranged the appetizers in a shallow ceramic dish.

   Oppositedeep

   Note

   The literal sense, and the oldest line in the family. It runs back through Middle English schalowe to Old English sceald, and from there to an Indo-European root meaning "to parch, dry out", a fitting image for water drying down to little depth. Low German Scholl, "shallow water", is a cousin. Both comparatives are standard: shallower or more shallow, and shallowest or most shallow.

2. 2
   adjective

   Extending only a short distance downward, as roots or foundations that do not reach far below the surface.

   Desert plants often survive on shallow roots that catch rain quickly.

   Builders poured shallow foundations because the bedrock sat close to the surface.

   Oppositedeep

   Note

   Here depth is judged on its own, with nothing measured against width. Water, roots or foundations are shallow simply because they stop near the surface. The pan-and-crater sense compares depth with breadth, so a wide pan can be shallow however large it is. Ask whether width matters: if it doesn't, this is the meaning in play.

3. 3
   adjective

   Concerned mainly with superficial matters such as appearance, status, or gossip rather than with deeper qualities or ideas.

   Critics dismissed the magazine as shallow, fixated on celebrity gossip and little else.

   She worried that swiping through profiles encouraged shallow judgments about people.

   Similarsuperficial, frivolous, vapid

   Oppositedeep, profound

   Note

   The first of three figurative senses, and the one about values. A shallow lifestyle chases glamour and surface. Keep it apart from the "flat, one-dimensional" sense, used of characters and works that lack substance, and from the "not intellectually deep" sense, which concerns understanding rather than priorities. A shallow person cares about the wrong things; a shallow analysis simply stops too soon.

4. 4
   adjective

   Not intellectually deep; failing to go beyond the surface of a subject; simple, unwise, or unknowing.

   The editorial offered a shallow analysis that ignored the deeper economic causes.

   His grasp of the theory stayed shallow despite years of casual reading.

   Similarsuperficial

   Oppositedeep, profound, thorough

   Note

   The mind's version of shallow water, and an old one. Francis Bacon wrote in 1622 that a king was "neither so shallow, nor so ill advertised" as to miss a rival's intention, and that pairing ties shallowness to being poorly informed. Today it attaches naturally to learning, analysis and understanding, as in shallow learning. Skin-deep is a close synonym.

5. 5
   adjective

   Lacking interest or substance; flat and one-dimensional, as a character or portrayal without complexity.

   Critics found the sequel's plot shallow compared with the original's layered storytelling.

   The biography offers only a shallow portrait of a famously complicated woman.

   Similarsuperficial, thin, flat

   Oppositedeep, complex, rich

6. 6
   nouncountable

   An area of reduced depth in an otherwise deep body of water.

   The ferry slowed to avoid a shallow that shifted with every storm.

   Herons stalked the shallows at the edge of the bay.

   Similarshoal

   Note

   The noun works in both numbers. The plural, the shallows, names a stretch of water, as in Dryden's Virgil of 1697, "dashed on the shallows of the moving sand." The singular picks out one spot: in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), the narrator watches people "bathing in a shallow." Bacon noticed that a swift stream is heard "upon shallows of gravel," not in the channel.

7. 7
   adjective

   Rising or falling only gradually; forming a small angle with the horizontal; not steep.

   The road climbs at a shallow grade through the foothills.

   Skipping stones works best when they strike the water at a shallow angle.

   Similargentle, gradual, low

   Oppositesteep

   Note

   Applied to angles and slopes, where the opposite is steep rather than deep. It collocates with paths of motion: a shallow climb, a shallow descent, a shallow bank angle. Flying took to it early. Aviation Magazine in 1922 described planes flying side by side "in a very shallow climb."

8. 8
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To make less deep, or to become less deep, as a body of water does when sediment accumulates.

   Crews shallowed the lagoon to create habitat for wading birds.

   Without regular dredging, busy harbors gradually shallow as silt settles.

   Oppositedeepen

   Note

   A verb that works both ways: silt can shallow a harbor, and a harbor can shallow on its own. Scientific prose also uses it for lines and gradients that flatten, close to the "not steep" sense. Andrew Z. Krug and colleagues wrote in 2009 of "the shallowing of Cenozoic age-frequency curves." There the -ing form serves as a noun.

9. 9
   adjective

   In tennis, landing or positioned not far into the court; close to the net rather than near the baseline.

   A shallow second serve invites an aggressive return.

   Her lob came down shallow, and he smashed it away.

   Similarshort

   Oppositedeep

   Note

   Tennis measures depth from the net, so a shallow ball is one that lands short in the court. The opposite is deep. The word attaches to shots, especially the second serve, and a shallow ball is an invitation to attack. Jamie Jackson's 2012 Wimbledon report has Lukas Rosol spurning "the chance to finish off a shallow second serve."

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The rudd, a European freshwater fish of the carp family with reddish fins.

    Anglers sometimes take a shallow on bread bait near the reed beds.

    A shallow rose to sip insects from the surface at dusk.

    Similarrudd

11. 11
    nounhistoricalcountable

    A costermonger's barrow; the handcart from which street vendors sold fruit, vegetables, or fish.

    He loaded his shallow with oranges before dawn and wheeled it toward the market.

    You might have gone there quite as easily, and enjoyed yourself much more, had your mode of conveyance been the railway, or a hansom, or even a costermonger's shallow.

    1871, Belgravia

    Similarbarrow, handcart, cart

    Note

    A word from the street trade of the past. The magazine Belgravia in 1871 could list "a costermonger's shallow" alongside the railway and the hansom as a way of getting somewhere, a joke that depends on readers knowing the humble barrow. Use it only in historical writing. Pairing it with costermonger keeps it from being read as the adjective.

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