slug
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: slŭg
ipa: /slʌɡ/
rhymes: -ʌɡ
Forms: form: slugs
Etymology: Originally referred to a slow, lazy person, from Middle English slugge (“lazy person", also "sloth, slothfulness”), probably of either Old English or Old Norse origin; compare Norn slug (“lazy, slothful, sluggish”), dialectal Norwegian slugg (“a large, heavy body”), sluggje (“heavy, slow person”), Danish slog (“rascal, rogue”); perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sliǵ-ōn, from *sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”) or otherwise from the root of Old Norse slókr (“lazy person, oaf”), whence Icelandic slókur (“laziness”). Compare also Dutch slak (“snail, slug”). Doublet of slotch.
The sense of a hitchhiking commuter is from the sense of a counterfeit bus token. Bus operators considered sluggers to be cheating as if they were using counterfeit tokens.
Senses: glosses: Any of many gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell.
glosses: A slow, lazy person; a sluggard.
examples: text: […] all our Ammunition was spent. Those of us who had Money made Slugs of it; their next Shift was to take the middle Screws out of their Guns, and charge their Pieces with them.
ref: 1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar, London, page 55:
text: A mass accelerator propels a solid metal slug using precisely-controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. The slug is designed to squash or shatter on impact, increasing the energy it transfers to the target. If this were not the case, it would simply punch a hole right through, doing minimal damage.
ref: 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Mass Accelerators Codex entry:
glosses: A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug.
glosses: A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal.
glosses: A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines.
glosses: A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic.
topics: journalism
media
glosses: A title, name or header, a catchline, a short phrase or title to indicate the content of a newspaper or magazine story for editing use.
examples: text: The average slug has a mass of around 0.00002 slugs.
text: The slug is defined as the mass which would accelerate at a rate of 1 ft/s² under a force of one pound-force (lbf). Since 1 lbf is the force exerted on a mass of one pound by a standard gravitational field (of exactly 9.80665 meters per square second), a slug is thus exactly equal to 196133/6096 pounds (about 32.1740485564 lb or 14.593902937206 kg).
ref: 2000 October 9, Gérard P. Michon, “What is a slug, in the [engineering] weight measurement system?”, in Numericana.com:
topics: natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
synonyms: geepound
glosses: The imperial (English) unit of mass that accelerates by 1 foot per second squared (1 ft/s²) when a force of one pound-force (lbf) is exerted on it.
examples: text: This is perhaps best done by considering a unit cell consisting of one bubble and part of the liquid slugs on each side of it…
ref: 1969, Graham B. Wallis, One-Dimensional Two-Phase Flow, McGraw-Hill, section 10.2, pages 282–283:
text: When these layers are recovered they inevitably result in a slug of sawdust which goes into the digester and tends to plug the screens in a Kamyr digester.
ref: 1973, Pulp & Paper International, volume 15:
text: Then, just a few nights before August 6, Gilbert testified that a "slug of sand-rock" weighing an estimate of one to two tons fell on his continuous miner as he was taking a cut, approximately fifteen feet from where he was standing.
ref: 1987, United States. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, United States. Board of Mine Operations Appeals, Occupational safety and health decisions:
text: Tvpically, enough sand is emplaced to create a slug of sand that moves along the shore causing noticeable and somewhat dramatic local changes.
ref: 1998, Orrin H. Pilkey with Katharine L. Dixon, The Corps and the Shore, page 159:
text: This is also furthered by the creation of a slug of light hydrocarbons near the oil displacement front, extracted by the carbon dioxide from the oil
ref: 1998, N. A. Krylov with A. A. Bokserman and Evgeniĭ Romanovich Stavrovskiĭ, The oil industry of the former Soviet Union, page 112:
text: Another phenomenon investigated was a slug of water falling through the cloud.
ref: 2005, Sam Mannan with Frank P. Lees, Lee's loss prevention in the process industries, page 16-115:
text: This method uses a slug of 100 mg/L chlorinated water as a slug that moves along the length of the pipeline. The slug is a percentage of the total length of the pipeline.
ref: 2007, William Lauer with Fred Sanchez, Disinfection of pipelines and storage facilities field guide, page 54:
text: For example, a slug of iron rust might appear because of the shearing action of a high-demand flow that loosens a previously deposited iron precipitate.
ref: 2010, Nancy E. McTigue, James M. Symons, editors, The water dictionary: a comprehensive reference of water terminology, 2nd edition, American Water Works Association, page 556:
text: These experiments investigate the ascent of a slug of gas in a vertical liquid-filed tube featuring a flare that abruptly doubles the cross sectional area.
ref: 2010, Robert A. Meyers, Extreme Environmental Events, page 1198:
text: You had to learn to grab the teat up next to the udder with your thumb and side of your first finger, grab a slug of milk and progressively squeeze it down the teat past your middle finger, ring finger and little finger
ref: 2011, Bill Calfee, The Art of Rimfire Accuracy, page 125:
glosses: A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material.
glosses: A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together.
topics: rail-transport
railways
transport
glosses: An accessory to a diesel-electric locomotive, used to increase adhesive weight and allow full power to be applied at a lower speed. It has trucks with traction motors, but lacks a prime mover, being powered by electricity from the mother locomotive, and may or may not have a control cab.
topics: broadcasting
communications
editing
journalism
literature
media
publishing
television
writing
glosses: A black screen used to separate broadcast items.
topics: letterpress-typography
media
publishing
typography
glosses: A piece of type metal imprinted by a linotype machine; also a black mark placed in the margin to indicate an error; also said in application to typewriters; type slug.
glosses: A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes.
qualifier: District of Columbia
glosses: A hitchhiking commuter.
examples: text: Slugs are better than just appending the document ID to the URL, as they are readable and understandable by visitors. They are also an important part of a good SEO. So that we can use slugs, every slug has to be unique.
ref: 2016, Fabian Vogelsteller, Isaac Strack, Marcelo Reyna, Meteor: Full-Stack Web Application Development, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 71:
qualifier: web development
glosses: The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename.
examples: text: money would be stirring, if it were not for this slug
ref: 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Usury”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
glosses: A hindrance, an obstruction.
examples: text: His rendezvous for his fleet, and for all sluggs to come to, should be between Calais and Dover.
ref: 1666, Samuel Pepys, Diary entry 17 October 1666:
glosses: A ship that sails slowly.
glosses: A block of text at the beginning of a scene that sets up the scene's location, characters, etc.
topics: biology
herpetology
natural-sciences
zoology
glosses: An infertile egg of a reptile.
Synonyms: sense: small amount of liquor
word: nip & Thesaurus:drink
Derived terms: banana slug
black slug
cherry slug
ghost slug
greenhouse slug
hump slug
land slug
leatherleaf slug
leopard slug
monkey slug
pancake slug
pear slug
red triangle slug
rifled slug
road slug
rose slug
sand slug
Santa Barbara shelled slug
sea slug
sell salt to a slug
slug bug
slug caterpillar
slughorn
slugify
slug line
slug moth
slug slime
slug snail
solid slug
variable neon slug
yard slug
yellow slug
Related terms: word: lug
word: sluggard
sense: gastropod, locomotive
word: snail