(informal) the usual US and Canadian word for slowcoach
Word Origin and History for slowpoke
n.
also slow poke, 1848, American English from slow (adj.) + poke (n.3), the name of a device, like a yoke with a pole, attached to domestic animals such as pigs and sheep to keep them from escaping enclosures. Bartlett (1859) calls it "a woman's word."
Slang definitions & phrases for slowpoke
slowpoke
noun
A slow, sluggish, slothful person: an old slowpoke
[1848+; fr slow used for vowel rhyme with the early 1800s poke, ''behave dilatorily, potter, saunter,'' perhaps influenced by 16th-century slowback, ''sluggard'']