Follow-up on sluff - play hooky, slack off

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Aug 9, 2011, at 6:51 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 8/9/2011 04:29 AM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>> On Aug 8, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> ... [quoting Ben]
>>>> 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."
>>>> -----
>>> [Quoting Wilson]
>>> 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.
>
> I could say it, if "sluff" were in my vocabulary
> with respect to homework (it now is, thanks to
> Ben, but it wasn't then).  And aren't most of the
> examples of "sluff v." in the OED transitive "sluff off "s? --
>
> 1964    N.Y. Times Mag. 6 Dec. 20   Its water-repellent finish sluffs off snow.
> 1966    J. Dos Passos Best Times (1968) ii.
> 56,   I had sluffed off Harvard indifference, but
> Harvard snobbery still hung on.
> 1972    New York 8 May 43/3   His [sc. a dog's]
> shedding mechanism, which now goes about building
> up and sluffing off the coat.  [This is the kind
> of example I would think of first -- and even say
> if I had a dog ... or a snake.]
> 1972    Village Voice (N.Y.) 1 June 50/4   When I
> consulted a urologist he complained that he was
> sick of other doctors sluffing the problem off on him all the time.
> 1976    National Skat & Sheepshead Q. Mar.
> 5   The picker sluffed off the club king.
> 1980    Amer. Speech 55 210   Black jazzmen
> returned to the linguistic roots of their art
> which had been sidetracked and sluffed off in the
> bebop/bop movement of the 1940s.
>
> In ...uhm, whist today, from reading bridge
> columns I think "sluff" is more common, or only, without "off", as in
>
> 1978    Detroit Free Press 2 Apr. 19 c/3   East
> is now squeezed in the red suits–he must either
> give up a trick to the jack of hearts or sluff
> two diamonds, which sets up declarer's third diamond.
>
> Joel

I'm familiar with sluffing in hearts, never with "off", but since the other examples I cited are intransitive (along the lines of Wilson above), they do not have the same feel as this. It's not that you're "sluffing off work" but that you are just "sluffing (off)." I think another meaning in the entry is warranted.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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