1593. Shakspeare, Comedy of Errors, ii. 2. Thou drone, thou snail, thou slug. Ibid. (1595), Romeo and Juliet, iv. 5, 2. Why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed.
1605. Bacon, Adv. of Learning. They are . . . hindrances to stay and slug the ship for further sailing. Ibid. (1597-1624), Essays, 'Of Usury.' Money would be stirring if it were not for this slugge.
1611. Cotgrave, Dict., s.v. Paresser. To slugge it, to laze it, to liue idly.
1621. Burton, Anat. Melan, III. II. iii. 1. A slug, a fat lustilugs.
1635. Quarles, Emblems [Nares]. One spends his day in plots, his night in play; another sleeps and slugs both night and day. Ibid., i. 13. Lord, when we leave the world and come to thee, How dull, how slug are we.
1641. Milton, Reformation in Eng., 1. It is still episcopacy that . . . worsens and sluggs the most learned and seeming religions of our ministers.
1648. Herrick, Hesperides, 'To Corinna Going a-Maying.' Get up sweet slug-a-bed, And see the dew bespangles herb and tree.
1652. Shirley, Brothers . . . Car. Will none deliver me? Lu. They are somewhat slug.
1659. Gauden, Tears of the Church, 381. Which soon grew a slug, when once the North-wind ceased to fill its sailes.
1666. Pepys, Diary, 17 Oct. His rendevouz for his fleet and for all sluggs to come.
1888. Ency. Brit., xii. 199. A slug [horse] must be kept going, and an impetuous one restrained.
4. (old).—A dram. Hence to fire (or cant) a slug = to drink (Grose).
1762. Smollett, L. Greaves, II. v. He ordered the waiter . . . to . . . bring alongside a short allowance of brandy or grog that he might cant a slug into his breadroom.
5. (American).—An ingot of gold; a twenty-dollar piece (Ency. Dict.), but in Century Dict. 'a gold coin of the value of fifty dollars privately issued in San Francisco during the mining excitement of 1849.'
1890. San Francisco Bulletin, 10 May. An interesting reminder of early days in California in the shape of a round fifty-dollar slug. . . . But fifty of these round fifty-dollar pieces were issued when orders came from the East prohibiting private coinage.
Slugger. See Slogger.
Sluice, verb. (common).—1. The
mouth: also sluice-house. As
verb.: e.g., to sluice the bolt
(dominoes, gob, or ivories) =
to drink heartily: see Dominoes
(Grose). Whence sluicery =
a public-house (Grose).
1840. Egan, Book of Sports. Sam's sluice-house was again severely damaged.
2. (venery).—The female pudendum: see Monosyllable.
d.1704. Brown, Works, ii. 184. That whore, my wife . . . that us'd to open her sluice . . . to gratify her concupiscense.
Verb. (colloquial).—To paddle; to bathe (or wet) freely.
d.1859. De Quincey, Works (Century). He dried his neck and face which he had been sluicing with cold water.
1860. Russell, Diary in India, I. 4. The great seas . . . sluicing the decks with a mimic ocean.
To sluice off, verb. phr. (American).—To divert; to lay aside.
1862. Congregationalist, 3 June. Some of present earning must thus be sluiced off, to repair the poverty of the past.
Slum, subs. (old and thieves').—1.
Nonsense; a trick; a swindle:
e.g., a sham begging letter, a roll
of 'snide' notes, &c. Hence up
to slum = knowing, not to be
had (q.v.); to fake the slum
= to do the trick. 2 (old) = idle
talk (see quots. 1821 and 1823).
