SLUGGISH. What has sluggish, a fine synonym meaning ‘lazy’, to do with slugs? It’s pretty self-explanatory, given slugs’ slow-moving habits. Curiously, though, the gastropod was named after the term ‘sluggish’ had entered the English language as another word for ‘slow moving’ or ‘lazy’ (in the fifteenth century). The slimy creatures didn’t get their sluggish name until the eighteenth century. SLOTHFUL. Sticking with animals, what is the relationship between ‘slothful’, meaning lazy or slow, and the sloth? Again, the term ‘sloth’ to denote laziness or sluggishness was there first (from the twelfth century); The animal characterised by its sluggish behaviour was so named in the seventeenth century. LOAFING. What about ‘loafing’ – a word meaning ‘passing time idly’ – and its relationship to ‘loaf’ (of bread)? There probably isn’t a link, but the origins of the term ‘loafing’ to mean ‘idling’ are shrouded in mystery. QUISBY. The word ‘quisby’ means ‘an idle fellow’, and so is a glorious synonym for a lazy person, for someone who idles. However, the word – rare though it is – is slightly more common in the phrase ‘doing quisby’, which was old slang for idling or not working. Of uncertain etymology. JOTTLE. This is an old Scots word – a verb. It is defined by one nineteenth-century dictionary thus: ‘To be apparently diligent and yet doing nothing, to be so about
