Follow-up on sluff - play hooky, slack off

[Benjamin Barrett]

The ADS list search for 1999 to today seems to be down, but the 1992-1999 search is working. 

1. On the ADS list on 5 February 1994 (http://www.americandialect.org/americandialectarchives/feb94.html), Donald M. Lance reports being told by Jan Brunvand on the ADS list:

-----
that in the public schools kids "sluff" school -- none of that hooky stuff. And the school bulletins use this term in discussing school policy. Known elsewhere? Widespread? (I don't keep up with the modern world and don't know these modren terms.) 'Sluff' is the usual term here. I 'played hooky' thirty years ago, but my wife says she used 'sluff.' She graduated from high school in 1966.
-----

2. Keith Russell says on that same day:
-----
We did have the word 'sluff-off', but that meant something more like 'to be lazy, not do one's homework, or generally not try very hard' or 'to not do something.' "Did you do your homework?" "No, I sluffed it off."
-----

3. On that same day, Charles F Juengling reports "sluff off" meaning "be lazy, not do one's homework, or generally not try very hard."

4. The following day, Lew Sanborne lsanbore reports "we used "sluff" to mean "ditched school," and also in "sluff off," meaning to slack off, or to not do what one should have been doing."

5. The Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sluff) has a slew of definitions for "sluff," including: "Used most commonly in the Western U.S., sluffing (probably derived from the word 'to slough') is synonymous with skipping class, cutting class, or ditching class." One example given by a different person is "Dude, your such a sluff! " One other relevant definition and example is: "When your drug dealer is late in delivering the goods / Damn, I was supposed to get hooked up an hour ago, why does Joe have to sluff?"

These meanings of sluff and sluff off are not in the OED, nor is sluffer (an alternative to "sluff" as a person).

6. With one possible exception, the earliest citation I see on Google for "sluffer" (being the easiest to search for, though probably a derivative of "sluff") is 1 February 2001 and it has the verb "sluff" as well: 

-----
One who sluffs off because he's in a small church or position will likely not have the opportunity to handle a bigger church or more responsible position.

One who is growing is getting better and better at things, able to handle a bigger and more responsible load. He's not a sluffer or parker.

(http://www.stevedavis.org/chapter%2019.html)
-----

7. That possible exception is from 1924 in "The Field Artillery Journal," January-February edition, in a poem and is repeated in the poem:

-----
I'm a slouch and a slop and a sluffer, 
And my ears they are covered with hair, 
And I frequent inhabit the guardhouse, 
I'll be "priv." until "fini la guerre."

(http://sill-www.army.mil/famag/1924/JAN_FEB_1924/JAN_FEB_1924_FULL_EDITION.pdf)
-----

This seems to match the meaning, but is so far removed in time from all the other hits that it seems dubious. Could this have been military slang that surfaced in Lance's wife's high school in the 1960s?

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org