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''slag'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔

slag - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

slag (countable and uncountable, plural slags)

  • Waste material from a mine.
    • ✤ Synonyms: goafing, gobbin, mullock
    • ✤ After the big village, the scenery had returned to grass and woodland, but this had now given way to ugly mounds of discarded slag. Beyond the slag was a colliery with its machinery and smoking chimney, making the whole area look grim and austere.1
  • Scum that forms on the surface of molten metal.
    • ✤ Synonym: dross
    • ✤ In Asia Minor and on islands in the Aegean Sea, dumps of slag (scum formed by molten metal surface oxidation) demonstrate that silver was being separated from lead as early as 5000 BC.2
    • ✤ He leans out over the track and skims slag off the top of the boiling steel, risking what is called “catching a flyer,” which occurs when hot metal explodes out of the mold, spraying everyone in the vicinity.3
  • Impurities formed and separated out when a metal is smelted from ore; vitrified cinders.
    • ✤ Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.4
    • ✤ Consequently, mounds of large ‘cakes’ of slag are often found near the smelting sites of the Late Bronze Age, as for example at Ramsau in Austria (Doonan et al. 1996).5
    • ✤ Synonyms: dross, recrement, scoria
  • Hard aggregate remaining as a residue from blast furnaces, sometimes used as a surfacing material.
    • ✤ Synonym: clinker
    • ✤ During blast furnace operations, the plant operator pays careful attention to the slag chemistry (both composition and variability) as slag behavior is a major consideration in ensuring the quality of hot metal (molten iron).6
    • ✤ All these properties are determined by slag composition and its temperature. In basic slags, foaming ability increases as SiO concentration grows.7
  • Scoria associated with a volcano.
    • ✤ Synonym: clinker
  • (UK, Ireland, Australia, slang, derogatory) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; a slut.
    • ✤ Synonyms: hussy, skank; see also Thesaurus: promiscuous woman
    • ✤ We never talked about that, of course; we talked about how we could find a woman in the Dilly, and if the Yanks had taken them all, how we could always resort to the peroxided older slags who hung out around the side doors to Waterloo station and did knee tremblers for the Yanks.8
    • ✤ Which grotesque auld hing-oot will the shrivelled post-menopausal slag want tae shaft? Stay tuned.9
    • ✤ ‘ Slag! Wait till I tell Jacob what we′ve been doing – and I will, you mark my words! He′ll want nowt to do with you then, will he, eh? He′ll see you for what you really are. A cheap and nasty little bitch!’10
    • ✤ ‘ […] He was a lovely man but, when I told him I wanted to continue swinging, he freaked out and called me a slag.’11
    • ✤ ‘ […] To the lady that came in to my coffee shop today and ripped on me and my fellow employees for being too slow: eat shit, you miserable slag!’12
    • ✤ Soph, yeah, you can’t murk me/You’re a slag, riddled with STDs13
  • (UK, Ireland, derogatory, dated) A coward.
    • ✤ Synonyms: chicken, quakebuttock; see also Thesaurus: coward
  • (UK, Ireland, chiefly Cockney, derogatory) A contemptible person, a scumbag.
    • ✤ Synonyms: arsehole, prick; see also Thesaurus: git
    • ✤ The writers took it for granted that England, with its working class composed of slags, purple-nosed losers, and animals fed on pinball, pornography and junk-food, was disintegrating into terminal class-struggle.14
    • ✤ The sycophantic slags all say/“I knew him first, and I knew him well”15
    • ✤ Kill him. Kill the royal slag.16
    • ✤ Can’t believe it’s been nearly 11 years since them slags smashed into the twin towers17

Verb

slag (third-person singular simple present slags, present participle slagging, simple past and past participle slagged)

  • (transitive) To produce slag.
  • (intransitive) To become slag; to agglomerate when heated below the fusion point.
  • (transitive) To reduce to slag.
  • (transitive, UK, slang) To talk badly about; to malign or denigrate (someone).
    • ✤ Synonyms: abuse, insult, slag off; diss, libel, slander; see also Thesaurus: offend, Thesaurus: defame
    • ✤ If you slag off the other person, then—to the extent that your child identifies with that person as their parent—you are slagging off a part of them.18
    • ✤ Rather than wait for her to start slagging my mother, I would disappear for a couple of days and inevitably, because I was getting no love at home, I began to stray once again.19
  • (transitive, Ireland, slang) To make fun of; to take the piss (tease, ridicule or mock).
    • ✤ Synonyms: befool, kid, take the piss; see also Thesaurus: mock
  • (intransitive, Australia, slang) To spit.
    • ✤ Synonym: expectorate

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle Low German slagge, slaggen (“slag, dross”), from Old Saxon ﹡slaggo, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡slaggō, from Proto-Germanic ﹡slaggô, from Proto-Germanic ﹡slagōną (“to strike”) + ﹡-gô (diminutive suffix). Compare Middle Low German slāgen (“to strike”), since originally the splinters struck off from the metal by hammering, from ﹡slagōn, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡slagōn. Compare also Old Saxon slegi, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡slagi.

See also Dutch slak, German Schlacke, Swedish slagg; also compare English slay.

Pronunciation

  • (without æ-raising before/ɡ/) IPA: /ˈslæɡ/, [ˈslæɡ]
    • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • (æ-raising before/ɡ/)
    • (Upper Midwestern US, Northwestern US, Canada) IPA: /ˈsleɪ̯ɡ/, [ˈsleɪ̯ɡ]
  • Rhymes: -æɡ
  • Hyphenation: slag

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2011, Vivienne Dockerty, A Woman Undefeated, page 54: ↩

  2. 2006, Melisa W. Lai, Michele Burns Ewald, Chapter 95: Silver, Martin J. Wonsiewicz, Karen G. Edmonson, Peter J. Boyle (editors), Goldfrank′s Toxicologic Emergencies, 8th Edition, page 1358, ↩

  3. 2009, John Hoerr, Monongahela Dusk, page 255: ↩

  4. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion ‎: ↩

  5. 2008, Barbara S. Ottaway, Ben Roberts, “The Emergence of Metalworking”, in Andrew Jones, editor, Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice, page 207: ↩

  6. 2006, Jan R. Prusinski, “44: Slag as a Cementitious Material”, in Joseph F. Lamond, James H. Pielert, editors, Significance of Tests and Properties of Concrete and Concrete-Making Materials, page 517: ↩

  7. 2010, Yuri N. Toulouevski, Ilyaz Y. Zinurov, Innovation in Electric Arc Furnaces, Springer, page 16: ↩

  8. 1984, Tristan Jones, Heart of Oak, 1997, paperback edition, page 260, ↩

  9. 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 252: ↩

  10. 2002, Josephine Cox, The Woman Who Left, 2012, ebook, unnumbered page, ↩

  11. 2008, Ashley Lister, Swingers - Female Confidential, page 31: ↩

  12. 2010, The Coast ‎, Halifax, Canada: ↩

  13. 2016 December 3, Millie B, “Soph Aspin Send”, performed by Millie B: ↩

  14. 1990, Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia, London; Boston: Faber and Faber, →ISBN, page 207: ↩

  15. 1987, “Paint a Vulgar Picture”, in Morrissey (lyrics), Johnny Marr (music), Strangeways, Here We Come, performed by The Smiths: ↩

  16. 1996, Sarah Kane, “Phaedra’s Love”, in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays, published 2001, Scene 8, page 100: ↩

  17. 2012 September 13, Alexis Petridis, quoting Danny Dyer (tweet), “Danny Dyer: why them 9/11 slags are freaking his nut”, in The Guardian ‎: ↩

  18. 2010, Courtenay Young, Help Yourself Towards Mental Health, page 344: ↩

  19. 2011, John Davies, Slings and Arrows, page 109: ↩

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