Follow-up on sluff - play hooky, slack off

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Tue Aug 9 18:52:24 UTC 2011


At 8/9/2011 12:56 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>Not being familiar with the meaning of "slough off its skin" for
>snakes, I don't have that connection. I can understand the
>etymological connection but have trouble seeing "sloughing off its
>skin" being a basis for something like "quit sluffing (off) and get
>back to work."

I didn't mean to slight "sluffing" of homework -- I agree that an
additional sense may be warranted.  I just wanted to assert that
"sluff off" transitive did not seem odd to me.

Ben, were you raised in Ireland?  :-)

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list