slug
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biology
broadcasting
communications
editing
herpetology
journalism
letterpress-typography
literature
media
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
publishing
rail-transport
railways
television
transport
typography
writing
zoology
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.
Inflected forms:
form: slugs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: slugs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: slugging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: slugged
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: slugged
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Any of many gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell.
pos: noun
gloss: A slow, lazy person; a sluggard.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
gloss: A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug.
pos: noun
examples: […] 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.
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.
gloss: A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal.
pos: noun
gloss: A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines.
pos: noun
gloss: A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic.
pos: noun
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: rare
examples: The average slug has a mass of around 0.00002 slugs.
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).
gloss: A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material.
pos: noun
examples: 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…
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.
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.
Tvpically, enough sand is emplaced to create a slug of sand that moves along the shore causing noticeable and somewhat dramatic local changes.
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
Another phenomenon investigated was a slug of water falling through the cloud.
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.
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.
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.
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
gloss: A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together.
pos: noun
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: A black screen used to separate broadcast items.
pos: noun
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes.
pos: noun
tags: regional
gloss: A hitchhiking commuter.
pos: noun
tags: US
slang
gloss: The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: A hindrance, an obstruction.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: money would be stirring, if it were not for this slug
gloss: A ship that sails slowly.
pos: noun
examples: His rendezvous for his fleet, and for all sluggs to come to, should be between Calais and Dover.
gloss: A block of text at the beginning of a scene that sets up the scene's location, characters, etc.
pos: noun
gloss: An infertile egg of a reptile.
pos: noun
gloss: To drink quickly; to gulp; to down.
pos: verb
gloss: To take part in casual carpooling; to form ad hoc, informal carpools for commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking.
pos: verb
examples: "We believe in car-pooling, but let's do it without restricting traffic. ..." Sam Snyder, 51, of Burke, who has been slugging to his job at the US Customs ....
no sane person would attempt to commute that far every day. Sure they do. I've often slugged to Fredericksburg and back. The VRE carries hundreds of people per day, and the I-95 HOV lanes carry tens of thousands of people each day.
gloss: To become reduced in diameter, or changed in shape, by passing from a larger to a smaller part of the bore of the barrel.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To move slowly or sluggishly; to lie idle.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: To slug in slouth and sensuall delights.
gloss: To load with a slug or slugs.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to slug a gun
gloss: To make sluggish.
pos: verb
examples: So little do we fear , you slug you
Synonyms: nip & Thesaurus:drink
Related words: lug
sluggard
Derived words: banana slug
black slug
cherry slug
ghost slug
greenhouse slug
hump slug
land slug
leatherleaf slug
leopard slug
mantleslug
monkey slug
pancake slug
pear slug
rainbow slug
red triangle slug
rifled slug
road slug
rose slug
sand slug
Santa Barbara shelled slug
sea slug
sell salt to a slug
semislug
slinch
slug bug
slugburger
slug caterpillar
sluggish
sluggos
sluggy
slughorn
slugicide
slugify
slugless
sluglike
slug line
slug moth
slug slime
slug snail
slugthrower
slugworm
solid slug
variable neon slug
yard slug
yellow slug
aslug
forslug
outslug
preslug
slugabed
slugabug
sluggable
Translations: