Follow-up on sluff - play hooky, slack off

[Jonathan Lighter]

I can "slough off" anything I want, just like a snake sloughs (off) its
skin.  It's like shrugging it off.

OTOH, it isn't an expression I use more than once every twenty or thirty
years.

I can't say I'm familiar with "sloughing school," however.

If "sluffer" was ever "army slang," few people could have used it.  I
find no trace of it anywhere else.  A "sluffer" would simply be someone who
sloughs things off, i.e., ignores what must be tended to.

JL
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Follow-up on sluff - play hooky, slack off
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 8, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
> >> The ADS list search for 1999 to today seems to be down, but the =
> >> 1992-1999 search is working.=20
> >>
> >> 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."
> >> -----
> >
> > FWIW, IME, _sluff off_ covers exactly the same semantic field as _fuck
> > off_.  It's always intransitive. You can't say "sluff it off" any more
> > than you can say "fuck it off."
>
> It is the same for me. Keith Russell's example is wrong for me.
>
> BB
>
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