Why is it called a 'slug'?

[pbmods]

Ok, I'm intrigued. And a bit confused.

Why is it called a 'slug'?

For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, or are wondering why I'm asking about living boogers on a technical coding site, a slug is essentially a human-readable version of a primary key.

In blogging and other CMS, the slug usually makes up the 'permalink' for the document. For an example, see this document.

[Plater]

Well it's a stretch but maybe from the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_%28typesetting%29

[pbmods]

Heya, Plater.

Interesting. I checked out the article you posted, and I noticed a similar article about 'slug' as a news industry term.

It turns out that a 'slug' is also the term for an article headline in a newspaper, named after the physical 'slug' (or piece of lead) that is used in typesetting machines to space out paragraphs.

According to ABC News Radio, the word 'slug' possibly derives from a Scandinavian word meaning 'to move slowly' or (by extension) 'to be lazy'.

Slugs are definitely slower for a server to process than article IDs, that's for sure!

Thanks for the link; I think that about cleared it up for me.

[JosAH]

According to ABC News Radio, the word 'slug' possibly derives from a Scandinavian word meaning 'to move slowly' or (by extension) 'to be lazy'.

The Dutch word for 'slug' (as in snail) is 'slak' which means exactly the same as
what you just described, which proves once again that Dutch happens to be the
mother of all languages.

kind regards,

Jos ;-)

[drhowarddrfine]

When I was much younger, I used to repair traffic signals. A bunch of cars moving down the road was called a 'slug', too.

[jamesd0142]

I disagree guys!

It was and always will be a slimey thing, that makes one hell of a mess in the garden.