English

Noun

slag ‎(plural slags)

1. Waste material from a coal mine.
   • 2011, Vivienne Dockerty, A Woman Undefeated, page 54,

     After the big village, the scenery had returned to grass and woodland, but this had now given way to ugly mounds of discarded slag. Beyond the slag was a colliery with its machinery and smoking chimney, making the whole area look grim and austere.

2. Scum that forms on the surface of molten metal.
   • 2006, Melisa W. Lai, Michele Burns Ewald, Chapter 95: Silver, Martin J. Wonsiewicz, Karen G. Edmonson, Peter J. Boyle (editors), Goldfrank′s Toxicologic Emergencies, 8th Edition, page 1358,

     In Asia Minor and on islands in the Aegean Sea, dumps of slag (scum formed by molten metal surface oxidation) demonstrate that silver was being separated from lead as early as 5000 BC.

   • 2009, John Hoerr, Monongahela Dusk, page 255,

     He leans out over the track and skims slag off the top of the boiling steel, risking what is called “catching a flyer,” which occurs when hot metal explodes out of the mold, spraying everyone in the vicinity.

3. Impurities formed and separated out when a metal is smelted from ore; vitrified cinders.
   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:

     Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.

   • 2008, Barbara S. Ottaway, Ben Roberts, The Emergence of Metalworking, Andrew Jones (editor), Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice, page 207,

     Consequently, mounds of large ‘cakes’ of slag are often found near the smelting sites of the Late Bronze Age, as for example at Ramsau in Austria (Doonan et al. 1996).

4. Hard aggregate remaining as a residue from blast furnaces, sometimes used as a surfacing material.
   • 2006, Jan R. Prusinski, 44: Slag as a Cementitious Material, Joseph F. Lamond, James H. Pielert (editors), Significance of Tests and Properties of Concrete and Concrete-Making Materials, page 517,

     During blast furnace operations, the plant operator pays careful attention to the slag chemistry (both composition and variability) as slag behavior is a major consideration in ensuring the quality of hot metal (molten iron).

   • 2010, Yuri N. Toulouevski, Ilyaz Y. Zinurov, Innovation in Electric Arc Furnaces, Springer, page 16,

     All these properties are determined by slag composition and its temperature. In basic slags, foaming ability increases as SiO₂ concentration grows.

5. Scoria associated with a volcano.
6. (Britain, pejorative, dated) A coward.
7. (Britain, chiefly Cockney, pejorative) A contemptible person, a scumbag.
   • 1996, Sarah Kane, Phaedra′s Love, Scene 8, 2001, Sarah Kane: Complete Plays, page 100,

     Kill him. Kill the royal slag.

   • 2012, Danny Dyer, tweet, quoted by Alexis Petridis, "Danny Dyer: why them 9/11 slags are freaking his nut", The Guardian

     Can't believe it's been nearly 11 years since them slags smashed into the twin towers

8. (Britain, pejorative) A prostitute.
   • 1984, Tristan Jones, Heart of Oak, 1997, paperback edition, page 260,

     We never talked about that, of course; we talked about how we could find a woman in the Dilly, and if the Yanks had taken them all, how we could always resort to the peroxided older slags who hung out around the side doors to Waterloo station and did knee tremblers for the Yanks.

9. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, slang, pejorative) A woman (sometimes a man) who has loose morals relating to sex; a ****.
   • 2002, Josephine Cox, The Woman Who Left, 2012, ebook, unnumbered page,

     ‘Slag! Wait till I tell Jacob what we′ve been doing – and I will, you mark my words! He′ll want nowt to do with you then, will he, eh? He′ll see you for what you really are. A cheap and nasty little bitch!’

   • 2008, Ashley Lister, Swingers - Female Confidential, page 31,

     ‘ […] He was a lovely man but, when I told him I wanted to continue swinging, he freaked out and called me a slag.’

Synonyms

• (impurities from a metal): dross, recrement, scoria
• (woman with loose sexual morals): see Wikisaurus:promiscuous woman

Derived terms

• slag-bag
• slaggy
• slag heap

Translations

See also

• clinker

Verb

slag ‎(third-person singular simple present slags, present participle slagging, simple past and past participle slagged)

1. (transitive) To produce slag.
2. (intransitive) To become slag; to agglomerate when heated below the fusion point.
3. (transitive, with "off") To talk badly about; to malign or denigrate (someone).
   • 2010, Courtenay Young, Help Yourself Towards Mental Health, page 344,

     If you slag off the other person, then—to the extent that your child identifies with that person as their parent—you are slagging off a part of them.

4. (intransitive, Australia, slang) To spit.

Translations

Derived terms

• slag about
• slag off
• slagging rag

References

• slag in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• “slag” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).

Anagrams

• gals
• lags

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /slɑx/

Etymology

Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *slagiz ‎(“a blow, strike”).

Noun

slag m ‎(plural slagen, diminutive slagje n)

1. blow, knock
2. battle
3. beat, stroke, pulsation

Derived terms

• aan de slag
• aanslag
• inslag
• kaakslag
• neerslag
• ontslag
• slaginstrument
• slagschip
• slagvaardig
• slagveld
• toverslag
• veldslag

Anagrams

• glas

Faroese

Etymology

From Old Norse slag.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /slɛaː/

Noun

slag n (genitive singular slags, plural sløg)

1. hit; punch
2. (medicine) stroke
3. battle between two armies, navies or air forces
4. kind; sort
5. (biology, taxonomy) species

Declension

Derived terms

• grønmetisslag
• rótaslag
• berjaslag
• plantuslag
• soppaslag
• dýraslag
• fiskaslag
• meyruslag
• eiturkoppaslag
• undirslag (subspecies)

Related terms

• slekt (genus)
• ætt (family)
• hópur (order)
• flokkur (class)
• fylki (phylum)
• ríki (kingdom)

References

• Lívfrøðilig frøðinevni (Jens-Kjeld Jensen & Marjun A. Simonsen) (nomenclature)
• Øktur føroyskur frøðinevnalisti (Jens-Kjeld Jensen) (Extended List of Nomenclature)

Icelandic

Etymology

From Old Norse slag.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /stlaːɣ/
• Rhymes: -aːɣ

Noun

slag n ‎(genitive singular slags, nominative plural slög)

1. beat, stroke, blow (an act of hitting, beating, striking)
2. (music) beat

Declension

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

slag n ‎(definite singular slaget, indefinite plural slag, definite plural slaga or slagene)

1. hit; punch
2. stroke (medical)
3. battle between two armies, navies or air forces
4. kind; sort

Derived terms

• hjerteslag
• slagskip
• slagverk

Swedish

Etymology

From Old Norse slag.

Pronunciation

Noun

slag n

1. hit; punch
2. the hit of a ball by a bat or a racket
3. battle between two armies, navies or air forces
4. stroke; the striking of a clock

   Klockan slog just tre slag

   The clock just struck three strokes

5. stroke; the time when a clock strikes

   Han kom precis på slaget midnatt

   He came on the stroke of midnight

6. (medicine) stroke; a loss of brain function arising when the blood supply to the brain is suddenly interrupted.
7. kind; sort

   En fågel av ett ovanligt slag

   A bird of an unusual kind

8. while; moment; a short period of time

   Kom hit ett slag!

   Come here a minute!

9. A fold on the legs of a pair of trousers, where about an inch of the leg is folded upwards.

Declension

Synonyms

• (battle): fältslag
• (kind): sort
• (moment): stund

See also

• få slag