Word: slug Part of Speech: noun 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; 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 Norn slug (“lazy, slothful, sluggish”), dialectal Norwegian slugg (“a large, heavy body”), sluggje (“heavy, slow person”), Danish slog (“rascal, rogue”). 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. Pronunciation: /slʌɡ/, /slɐɡ/, /slʊɡ/ 1. Any of many gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell. 2. A slow, lazy person; a sluggard. Labels: obsolete 3. A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug. Example: […] 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. Example: 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. 4. A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal. 5. A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines. 6. A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic. 7. 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. 8. 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. Labels: rare Example: The average slug has a mass of around 0.00002 slugs. Example: 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). 9. A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material. Example: 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… Example: 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. 10. A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together. 11. 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. 12. A black screen used to separate broadcast items. 13. 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. 14. A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes. Labels: regional 15. A hitchhiking commuter. Labels: US, slang 16. The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename. Example: 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. 17. A hindrance, an obstruction. Labels: obsolete Example: money would be stirring, if it were not for this slug 18. A ship that sails slowly. Example: His rendezvous for his fleet, and for all sluggs to come to, should be between Calais and Dover. 19. A block of text at the beginning of a scene that sets up the scene's location, characters, etc. 20. An infertile egg of a reptile.