Shallow

//ˈʃæl.oʊ// adj, name, noun, verb

adj, name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

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

    "The ship ran aground in an unexpected shallow."

  2. 2
    a stretch of shallow water wordnet
  3. 3
    A fish, the rudd.
  4. 4
    A costermonger's barrow. historical

    "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."

Verb
  1. 1
    To make or become less deep. ambitransitive

    "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 )."

  2. 2
    become shallow wordnet
  3. 3
    make shallow wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Having little depth; significantly less deep than wide.

    "This crater is relatively shallow."

  2. 2
    Extending not far downward.

    "The water is shallow here."

  3. 3
    Concerned mainly with superficial matters.

    "It was a glamorous but shallow lifestyle."

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

    "The acting is good, but the characters are shallow."

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

    "shallow learning"

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    Not deep in tone. obsolete

    "the sound perfecter and not so shallow and jarring"

  2. 7
    Not 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."

  3. 8
    Not steep; close to horizontal.

    "a shallow climb"

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking physical depth; having little spatial extension downward or inward from an outer surface or backward or outward from a center wordnet
  2. 2
    not deep or strong; not affecting one deeply wordnet
  3. 3
    lacking depth of intellect or knowledge; concerned only with what is obvious wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
shoalsuperficialairyamateuramateurishankle deep

Example

More examples

"I don't like his shallow personality."

Etymology

From Middle English schalowe (“not deep, shallow”); apparently related to Middle English schalde, schold, scheld, schealde (“shallow”), from Old English sċeald (“shallow”), from Proto-Germanic *skal-, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelh₁- (“to parch, dry out”). Related to Low German Scholl (“shallow water”). See also shoal.

Related phrases

Shallow BayShallow Waterbroad and shallowgiven enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallowshallow brooks are noisyshallow copyshallow coveshallow embeddingshallow endshallow fellowshallow-copyshallow-fried

More for "shallow"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.