shallow

comparative shallower · comparative more shallow · superlative shallowest · superlative most shallow

1. Having little depth; significantly less deep than wide.

   This crater is relatively shallow.

   3 more examples

   Sauté the onions in a shallow pan.

   The corpus is massive, being deeper anteriorly and shallowest where the ramus takes origin. The corpi of both sides are more closely spaced to each other than in the living form, and the symphysis is narrower.

   1977, Vincent J. Maglio, Dental and Skeletal Morphology of the Earliest Elephants, page 33

   The two shallower fibriscesses may represent lysis due to the spread of the infection that entered the phalanx at its presumed puncture wound, the deep fibriscess on the palmar surface.

   2016 February 25, “Record-Breaking Pain: The Largest Number and Variety of Forelimb Bone Maladies in a Theropod Dinosaur”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI

2. Extending not far downward.

   The water is shallow here.

3. Concerned mainly with superficial matters.

   It was a glamorous but shallow lifestyle.

4. Lacking interest or substance; flat; one-dimensional.

   The acting is good, but the characters are shallow.

5. Not intellectually deep; not penetrating deeply; simple; not wise or knowing.

   shallow learning

   1 more example

   The king was neither so shallow, nor so ill advertised, as not to perceive the intention of the French king.

   1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC

   Synonyms: skin-deep

6. obsoleteNot deep in tone.

   the sound perfecter and not so shallow and jarring

   1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC

7. hobbiesNot far forward, close to the net.

   Rosol spurned the chance to finish off a shallow second serve by spooning into the net, and a wild forehand took the set to 5-4, with the native of Prerov required to hold his serve for victory.

   2012 June 28, Jamie Jackson, “Wimbledon 2012: Lukas Rosol shocked by miracle win over Rafael Nadal”, in The Guardian

8. Not steep; close to horizontal.

   a shallow climb

   4 more examples

   a shallow descent

   a shallow bank angle

   The planes then flew side by side with motors wide open in a very shallow climb[…].

   1922 July 24, Aviation Magazine

   If they [the Apollo astronauts] come in too steeply, they will be crushed in the Earth’s atmosphere. If they come in too shallow, they will skip out and go into Earth orbit and not be able to return.

   1968 December 20, CBS Evening News

plural shallows

1. A shallow portion of an otherwise deep body of water.

   The ship ran aground in an unexpected shallow.

   4 more examples

   A swift stream is not heard in the channel, but […]upon shallows of gravel.

   1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC

   dashed on the shallows of the moving sand

   1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

   It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream.

   1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine

   He dipped his hand in the shallow: Water ran over and under Hair on a narrow wrist bone; […]

   1941, Theodore Roethke, “The Premonition”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 6

2. A fish, the rudd.
3. historicalA costermonger's barrow.

   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, volume 14, page 213

4. slangcookingA shallow hotel pan.

   Coordinate term: deep

present singular third person shallows · participle present shallowing · participle past shallowed · past shallowed

1. ambitransitiveTo make or become less deep.

   The shallowing of Cenozoic age-frequency curves from tropics to poles thus appears to reflect the decreasing probability for genera to reach and remain established in progressively higher latitudes ( 9 ).

   2009 February 6, Andrew Z. Krug et al., “Signature of the End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction in the Modern Biota”, in Science, volume 323, number 5915, →DOI, pages 767–771

plural Shallows

1. A surname.