A Dictionary of Cont..

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may be made acceptable by a slogan heard
often enough (Votes for Women!).
Although the high priests of the advertising
world insist on “the positive approach,” negative
slogans have been used against opposing
groups with devastating success (Let ‘em eat
cake. Turn the rascals out. Kind regards to
Mrs. Fisher). Sometimes a phrase may be
meaningless in itself and yet by its associations
take on the character of a slogan (Martin,
Barton and Fish). And every once in a while
a slogan is turned back on its subject with
ironic implication: Back to normalcy, A
chicken in every pot, We planned it that way.
It seems to be a sign of the times that advertising
slogans are not as long-lived as they used
to be. Many slogans used to be almost institutional
(He won’t be happy till he gets it. Eventually-why
not Now? 99.44% Pure) but few
products retain such slogans any more. Most of
them change from season to season. Perhaps
they pall more quickly with the greater repetition
they now get. Perhaps copy writers must
live. Or perhaps the public is more sophisticated.
Slogans used to assume something of the
character of pronouncements and people were
expected to believe them; nowadays they are
more generally accepted as simply devices for
gaining attention.
slothful. See lazy.
slough of despond. As a term for a state of dejection
or despondency, the or a slough of
despond, taken from the dismal bog into which
Christian, the hero of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress, falls, is now hackneyed.
sloven and slattern are closely related in their
meanings. A sloven may be either male or
female. It is one who is habitually negligent of
neatness or cleanliness, one who is through
negligence dirty and untidy (General Patton,
something of a dandy himself, tolerated no
slovens in his army). The word also means one
who works, or does anything, in a negligent,
slipshod manner (What damned sloven left the
mop lying there on the stairs, to break a body’s
neck!). Slattern is narrower in reference. It
means a slovenly, untidy woman or girl (Her
mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a
dawdle, a slattern . . . whose house was the
scene of mismanagement and discomfort from
beginning lo end. Come Back Little Sheba
is a moving treatment of a slattern). See also
slut.
slow; slowly. The form slow may be used as an
adjective, as in a slow train. Either form may be
used as an adverb.
The form slow has been used to qualify a
verb, as in how slow this old moon wanes, for
at least four hundred years. Even if this were
not the case, road signs everywhere reading
drive slow indicate that the word slow is
standard English in this construction. This is
because “standard English” means the English
spoken by the responsible people in the community
or nation. No other standard can be
set up for a language. Drive slowly may also be
used, but anyone who claims that this is “better
grammar” misunderstands the nature of language.
And in this particular case, he is also
unfamiliar with English literature over the past
four hundred years.
slug is used in more senses in the United States
than in England. In both countries it designates
the shell-less, snail-like creature or anything
that moves sluggishly, or a piece of lead or
other metal for firing from a gun. As a noun
slug was used in America, colloquially, to
designate a coin. At the time of the California
gold rush (1859) a slug was a $50 gold coin
and these coins, with the same popular name,
were made again in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific
Exposition. In recent contemporary American
usage, the most common meaning of the noun
slug was a piece of metal shaped like a nickel
used in place of a nickel in public telephones
and mechanical vending devices. Since Congress
outlawed the use of these slugs in 1944, however,
the word in this sense has fallen into
disuse.
Slug may also mean a drink or dram of
liquor. This sense has died out in England, but
it is common in America (He always took a
slug of whiskey just before he went onstage).
In the vocabulary of printers, in America and
England, slug means a thick strip of type metal
less than type-high, such a strip containing a
type-high number, etc. for temporary use, or a
line of type in one piece, as produced by a
linotype machine.
Americans also use slug colloquially as a
verb meaning to strike heavily, to hit hard,
especially with a heavy club or blunt instrument
(Somebody slugged him from behind just as he
went to turn on the light). The verb may have
derived from hitting with a slug, a piece of lead,
but this etymology is conjectural. The English
prefer slog, a variant of slug, to convey this
idea. Both English and Americans use slog to
mean to walk or plod heavily, as with burdened
feet through mire.
slumber is not simply an elegant variation of
sleep. It characterizes the sleep as light or fitful
(Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither
slumber nor sleep. From carelessness it shall
fall into slumber, and from a slumber it shall
settle into a deep and long sleep). By extension,
slumber may describe a state of inactivity,
quiescence (Most German consciences lay in u
slumber from 1933 until 1945).
slung. See sling.
slunk. See slink.
slur, as a verb, means to pass over lightly, or
without due mention or consideration. In this
use it is often followed by over (He slurred over
his own responsibility for the failure of the
venture). It also means to pronounce a syllable
or a word indistinctly, as in hurried or careless
utterance (They slur their consonants so! It’s
just a slack-mouthed drooling of pale vowels!).
In music, to slur is to sing to a single syllable,
without a break, two tones of different pitch,
or to mark with a slur. In the United States slur