slag

Borrowed from Middle Low German slagge (whence also Dutch slak, German Schlacke, Swedish slagg); originally, the splinters struck off from the metal by hammering; compare slay.

• IPA^(key): /slæɡ/

• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -æɡ

slag (countable and uncountable, 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).

   Synonyms: dross, recrement, scoria

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, derogatory, dated) a coward
7. (Britain, chiefly Cockney, derogatory) 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, derogatory) 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, South Africa, slang, derogatory) a woman (sometimes a man) who has loose morals relating to sex; a slut
   • 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.’

• (woman with loose sexual morals): see Thesaurus:promiscuous woman

• clinker

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, sometimes 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

• slag in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “slag” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.

• gals, lags

From Middle Dutch slach, from Old Dutch slag, from Proto-Germanic *slagiz.

• IPA^(key): /slɑx/

• audio

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• Hyphenation: slag
• Rhymes: -ɑx

slag m (plural slagen, diminutive slagje n)

1. blow, knock, strike
2. beat, stroke, pulsation
3. battle
4. (baseball) strike, hit

   Antonym: wijd

slag n (plural slagen, diminutive slagje n)

1. kind, type, sort
2. parcel, plot, premise (stretch of land)

• glas

From Old Norse slag.

• IPA^(key): /slɛaː/

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

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

From Old Norse slag.

• IPA^(key): /stlaːɣ/
• Rhymes: -aːɣ

slag n (genitive singular slags, nominative plural slög)

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

• slegill

From Old Norse slag, and slagr (sense 4).

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

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

• “slag” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• IPA^(key): /slɑːɡ/

From Old Norse slag.

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

1. a blow, a strike, a punch

   Boksaren traff med eit hardt slag. ― The boxer landed a hard punch.

2. a battle

   Napoleon tapte slaget ved Waterloo. ― Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo.

3. (medicine) a stroke

   Tanta mi er på sjukehus etter å ha fått slag. ― My aunt is in hospital after having a stroke.

From Old Norse slagr.

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

1. a type, a kind, a sort

   Eg likar alle slag blomar. ― I like all kinds of flowers.

• “slag” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

From Old Norse slag.

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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

   Synonym: fältslag

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

   Synonym: sort

8. while; moment; a short period of time

   Kom hit ett slag! ― Come here a minute!

   Synonym: stund

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

• få slag