LAGGARDS Synonyms: 28 Similar and Opposite Words

laggards

noun

plural of laggard

as in snails

someone who moves slowly or more slowly than others tried to spur on the laggards at the back of the line during the hike

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Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of laggards The divergence is not random, and understanding what separates the early winners from the laggards is increasingly important for stock selection. —

Jason Kirsch, Forbes.com, 20 May 2026 The high-momentum long-short basket – a strategy of owning the most persistent outperformers and shorting the deepest laggards – has only gained 20% or more over three months 11 times before today. —

Michael Santoli, CNBC, 19 May 2026 When companies must report carbon emissions using the same methodology, for example, or disclose labor conditions using identical categories, investors can compare performance, identify laggards and allocate capital accordingly. —

Suvrat Dhanorkar, The Conversation, 18 May 2026 The laggards in the polls also took on Steyer, painting him as hypocritical for claiming an environmentalist’s mantle, after acquiring some of his vast wealth with fossil fuel investments. —

James Rainey, Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2026 Cyclical shares such as autos, banks and industrials were also among the biggest laggards. —

Levin Stamm, Bloomberg, 20 Apr. 2026 Sunday saw many laggards penalized for failure to obey the national summons. —

Aj Willingham, AJC.com, 1 Apr. 2026 The California Democratic Party pitched its new, periodic polls as a way to help voters and campaigns make sense of the unusually wide-open race for governor — and help encourage laggards to quit the race. —

Ben Paviour, Sacbee.com, 24 Mar. 2026 The conflict is creating leaders and laggards, JPMorgan analysts wrote Monday. —

Rohan Goswami, semafor.com, 3 Mar. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for laggards

Noun

However, borax will not work on pests that aren't interested in eating it, such as termites, bed bugs, mosquitoes, flying insects above ground level, or any number of other outdoor pests, such as slugs and snails.

— Louise Parks, Martha Stewart, 17 May 2026
The snails’ iron-rich shell is a vital part of their survival strategy—but not as a protective armor, says Chong Chen, a senior scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and a leading expert on the scaly-foot snail, who led the effort to map its genome.

— Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 15 May 2026