slug

Meanings

Noun

• Any of many terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell.
• A slow, lazy person; a sluggard.
• A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug.
• A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal.
• A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines.
• A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic.
• 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.
• 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.
• A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material.
• A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together.
• 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.
• A black screen.
• 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.
• A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes.
• A hitchhiking commuter.
• The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename.
• A hindrance, an obstruction.
• A ship that sails slowly.
• A hard blow, usually with the fist.

Verb

• To drink quickly; to gulp; to down.
• To take part in casual carpooling; to form ad hoc, informal carpools for commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking.
• To become reduced in diameter, or changed in shape, by passing from a larger to a smaller part of the bore of the barrel.
• To move slowly or sluggishly; to lie idle.
• To load with a slug or slugs.
• To make sluggish.
• To hit very hard, usually with the fist.

Origin

• Originally referred to a slow, lazy person, from Middle English slugge, probably of Old Norse origin; compare dialectal Norwegian sluggje. Compare also Dutch slak.
• Unknown. Perhaps somehow from Proto-Germanic *slagiz ("a blow, strike"). If so, then ultimately cognate with German Schlag ("blow, hit") and Dutch slag ("blow, strike").