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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT
Imported dictionary evidence
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35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCAL2 source sections across 1 headword matching “Slug”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
slugEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
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.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗slugEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
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.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
More sources for this spelling
These are spelling matches, not a claim of identical senses or agreement. Historical accounts retain their own editions and limits; none is automatically promoted into reviewed ancestry.
Chambers (1908)
1908- SlugEnglish · e-38700-2145
Slug, slug, n. a heavy, lazy fellow: a name for land-molluscs of order Pulmonata, with shell rudimentary or absent—they do great damage to garden crops: any hinderance.—ns. Slug′-a-bed (Shak.), one who is fond of lying i
Read the full source record → - SlugEnglish · e-38700-2146
Slug, slug, n. a cylindrical or oval piece of metal for firing from a gun: a piece of crude metal. [Prob. from slug above, or slug=slog, to hit hard.]
Read the full source record →
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MODERN ENTRY POINTS
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ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
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WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 1
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was -logy a freestanding ancestral word?
No evidence reviewed here supports that representation. Merriam-Webster calls -logy a noun combining form and explains that a hyphenated entry is a word element forming part of a compound; the historical forms are likewise evidenced within larger formations. The unrelated adjective logy “sluggish” has a different history.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 0
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BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “slug.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “slug.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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