To speak slowly with prolonged vowel sounds, stretching out words in a characteristic way often associated with certain regional accents.
Drawl likely comes from Dutch 'dralen,' meaning to delay or linger, which English borrowed around the 1600s. The word described the way speech lingers over syllables, and it eventually became especially associated with Southern American English pronunciation patterns.
A drawl isn't lazy speech—it's a linguistic feature where people genuinely hold vowels longer, and studies show drawls are often slowest in relaxed social contexts but speed up in stressful situations, revealing how emotion shapes speech patterns.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.