Meaning & use
summer lull
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Meaning
nouncountable
A period during the warm months when business, news, or other activity slows down and becomes unusually quiet.
Grammar: Normally singular with an or the: the shop always faces a summer lull.
Patterns
- a summer lull in something
- a summer lull for someone
Ticket sales usually dip during the summer lull, when half the city is on vacation.
Reporters struggle to fill the paper during the summer lull because politicians have left town.
The restaurant used the summer lull to repaint the dining room and retrain the staff.
Word forms
| plural | summer lulls |
|---|
Common combinations
- hit a summer lull
- Our online store hit a summer lull in July and orders fell by a third.
- the usual summer lull
- After a busy spring, the usual summer lull gave the team time to catch up on paperwork.
- ride out the summer lull
- Small shops near the school often struggle to ride out the summer lull.
- a summer lull in hiring
- Recruiters noticed a summer lull in hiring before the autumn rush.
- beat the summer lull
- The gym offered cheap day passes to beat the summer lull.
Synonyms and how they differ
- slow season
- Slow season is the plainer business phrase and can fall in any part of the year, while summer lull names the warm months specifically.
- doldrums
- The doldrums suggests a gloomy, stuck mood or economy, whereas a summer lull is simply a quiet spell that everyone expects.
- off-season
- Off-season is used mainly for tourism and sport, where there is a clear busy period, while summer lull fits any field that quietens in July and August.
- dead season
- Dead season is stronger and more informal, and it is often used by journalists about a period with no news.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: summer lull or slump?
summer lull vs slump
A slump is a worrying decline that may last and often has a cause, such as a weak economy. A summer lull is brief, seasonal, and expected to end.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'summer lull' correctly?
Choose one answer.
A summer lull is a quiet period in summer, so scheduling repairs when ticket sales drop makes sense. The first option fails because a lull means less activity, not a record high.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “summer lull”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.