slug
/slʌɡ/ noun, verb
Forms slugs slugging slugged
- noun Any of many gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell.
- noun (obsolete) A slow, lazy person; a sluggard.
- noun A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug.
- noun A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal.
- noun A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines.
- noun A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic.
- noun (journalism) 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.
- noun (physics, rare) 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. “The average slug has a mass of around 0.00002 slugs.”
- verb To drink quickly; to gulp; to down.
- verb To take part in casual carpooling; to form ad hoc, informal carpools for commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking.
- verb (intransitive, of a bullet) To become reduced in diameter, or changed in shape, by passing from a larger to a smaller part of the bore of the barrel.
- verb (obsolete, intransitive) To move slowly or sluggishly; to lie idle.
- verb (transitive) To load with a slug or slugs. “to slug a gun”
- verb To make sluggish.
- noun A hard blow, usually with the fist.
- verb (transitive) To hit very hard, usually with the fist. “He insulted my mother, so I slugged him.”
- noun (US, finance, informal) A special-purpose security of the State and Local Government Series.
Synonyms
geepound nip & Thesaurus:drink bullet sluggard type slug punch clout poke lick biff slog swig idle laze stagnate
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.
Uncertain. Perhaps somehow from Proto-Germanic *slagiz (“a blow, strike”). If so, then cognate with slay and slaughter; also German Schlag (“blow, hit”) and Dutch slag (“blow, strike”). Also compare slog.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A drone; a slow, lazy fellow; a sluggard. Shak.
- noun A hindrance; an obstruction. [Obs.] Bacon.
- verb To move slowly; to lie idle. [Obs.]
- verb To make sluggish. [Obs.] Milton.
Etymology [OE. slugge slothful, sluggen to be slothful; cf. LG. slukk low-spirited, sad, E. slack, slouch, D. slak, slek, a snail.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “slug”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details