What it doesn't mean
It is much older, and it is not really slang: it is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and in Robert Herrick's poetry of 1648.
What it really means
A slugabed is someone who will not get up. The alarm has gone, the day has started, and they are still a warm lump under the covers.
It can sound like a Victorian nursery word, but it is far older than that, and it was never really slang. It is in Shakespeare.
In Romeo and Juliet, Act 4 Scene 5, it is the morning of Juliet's wedding to Paris. The Nurse bustles in to wake her: Mistress! What, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she. Why, lamb, why, lady, fie, you slug-abed! She scolds, she teases, she calls her sweetheart and bride.
The audience knows what the Nurse does not. Juliet has taken the Friar's potion. She is not lying in. She appears to be dead. So the most famous use of this cosy, grumbling word comes seconds before one of the great shocks of the play — the joke turns over in the Nurse's mouth.
The word is built simply. Slug was an old verb meaning to be slow or to lie idle, and abed means in bed: a slug-a-bed is someone lazing in bed. Half a century after Shakespeare, Robert Herrick used it far more sweetly in Corinna's Going a-Maying (1648): Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see / The dew bespangling herb and tree.
Between those two poles — the gentle nudge and the scolding — is where the word has lived ever since. Call someone a slugabed and you are complaining, but usually fondly.
Where it comes from
old verb: to be slow or idle
on, in
bed — so 'abed', in bed
Wiktionary, after the OED: from slug, 'to move slowly or sluggishly; to lie idle', plus abed.
- 1590s
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 4 Scene 5: the Nurse calls Juliet a 'slug-abed' as she tries to wake her on her wedding morning.
- 1648
Robert Herrick, 'Corinna's Going a-Maying': 'Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see / The dew bespangling herb and tree.'
In real life
- It's half past eleven, you slugabed — the bacon's gone cold and the dog's given up on you.
- On holiday she becomes a magnificent slugabed and refuses to apologise.
- Every teenager is a slugabed on Saturday and a lark on the first day of the school trip.
Questions
Q01What is a slugabed?
A lazy person who lies in bed after the usual time for getting up — Wiktionary's definition, which also gives 'sluggard' as a synonym.
Q02Did Shakespeare invent slugabed?
His is the earliest example Wiktionary cites: the Nurse calls Juliet 'you slug-abed' in Romeo and Juliet. That does not prove he coined it; he may simply be the first to have written it down in a surviving text.
Q03Is slugabed Victorian?
No. It goes back to the 1590s, and Robert Herrick used it in a poem in 1648.
Sources
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, full text (Project Gutenberg) — Act 4 Scene 5.
- Wiktionary — slugabed (etymology, pronunciation, citations from Shakespeare and Herrick).