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