Noun

(countable) A gap, a delay; an interval created by something not keeping up; a latency.

* 2004 , May 10. The New Yorker Online,

During the Second World War, for instance, the Washington Senators had a starting rotation that included four knuckleball pitchers. But, still, I think that some of that was just a generational lag .

(uncountable) Delay; latency.

* 1999 , Loyd Case, Building the ultimate game PC

Whatever the symptom, lag is a drag. But what causes it? One cause is delays in getting the data from your PC to the game server.

* 2001 , Patricia M. Wallace, The psychology of the Internet

When the lag is low, 2 or 3 seconds perhaps, Internet chatters seem reasonably content.

* 2002 , Marty Cortinas, Clifford Colby, The Macintosh bible

Latency, or lag , is an unavoidable part of Internet gaming.

(British, slang, archaic) One sentenced to transportation for a crime.

(British, slang) a prisoner, a criminal.

* 1934 , , Thank You, Jeeves

On both these occasions I had ended up behind the bars, and you might suppose that an old lag like myself would have been getting used to it by now.

(snooker) A method of deciding which player shall start. Both players simultaneously strike a cue ball from the baulk line to hit the top cushion and rebound down the table; the player whose ball finishes closest to the baulk cushion wins.

One who lags; that which comes in last.

* Alexander Pope

the lag of all the flock

The fag-end; the rump; hence, the lowest class.

* Shakespeare

the common lag of people

A stave of a cask, drum, etc.; especially (engineering) one of the narrow boards or staves forming the covering of a cylindrical object, such as a boiler, or the cylinder of a carding machine or steam engine.

A bird, the greylag.

Noun

(en noun)

Waste material from a coal mine.

* 2011 , Vivienne Dockerty, A Woman Undefeated , page 54,

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.

Scum that forms on the surface of molten metal.

* 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,

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.

* 2009 , , Monongahela Dusk , page 255,

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.

Impurities]] formed and separated out when a metal is smelted from ore; [[vitrify, vitrified cinders.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=

, title=Internal Combustion , chapter=2 citation , passage=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.}}

* 2008 , Barbara S. Ottaway, Ben Roberts, The Emergence of Metalworking'', Andrew Jones (editor), ''Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice , page 207,

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).

Hard aggregate remaining as a residue from blast furnaces, sometimes used as a surfacing material.

* 2006 , Jan R. Prusinski, 44: Slag as a Cementitious Material'', Joseph F. Lamond, James H. Pielert (editors), ''Significance of Tests and Properties of Concrete and Concrete-Making Materials , page 517,

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).

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

All these properties are determined by slag' composition and its temperature. In basic ' slags , foaming ability increases as SiO₂ concentration grows.

Scoria associated with a volcano.

(UK, pejorative, dated) A coward.

(UK, pejorative) A contemptible person, a scumbag.

* 1996 , '', Scene 8, 2001, ''Sarah Kane: Complete Plays , page 100,

Kill him. Kill the royal slag .

(UK, pejorative) A prostitute.

* 1984 , , Heart of Oak , 1997, paperback edition, page 260,

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.

(UK, Australia, New Zealand, slang, pejorative) A woman (sometimes a man) who has loose morals relating to sex; a slut.

* 2002 , , The Woman Who Left , 2012, ebook, unnumbered page,

‘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!’

* 2008 , Ashley Lister, Swingers - Female Confidential , page 31,

‘He was a lovely man but, when I told him I wanted to continue swinging, he freaked out and called me a slag .’