slug

Definition

n. a small, soft animal like a snail but without a shell. It moves very slowly and leaves a sticky trail on the ground.

n. a shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc, typically having a slow-moving, elongated body. In a technical sense, it also refers to a unique string of characters used in a URL to identify a specific page.

simple

“A slug ate the leaves in my garden last night.”

contextual

“After the heavy rain, several slugs appeared on the damp patio stones near the vegetable patch.”

complex

“While the common garden slug is often viewed as a pest by horticulturists, it plays a vital role in the ecosystem by breaking down organic matter into nutrient-rich soil.”

Refers to the animal in general contexts; in web development, it refers to the human-readable part of a URL.

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.

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

NOUN

slug(B1)

slugger(B2)

ADJECTIVE

sluggish(B2)

lug snail