Dictionary

slugicide en · NOUN

Etymology

From slug + -icide.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A substance that kills slugs.
   • Certain slugicides are excellent preventives against slugs and do not hurt the seedlings; 1914, Dorothy Lowe, “Sowing seeds. Weeding. Mulching. Cuttings. Runners and Layers. Potting. Syringing. Pruning fruit trees and shrubs.”, in A Book of Simple Gardening, Cambridge: at the University Press, page 16:
   • I have applied slugicides in every variety that the advertisements offer; but the slugs persist. 1906, Eden Phillpotts, My Garden, page 62:
   • They all talk, telling of the Dorothies that did so well last year, the delphiniums the slugs ate, and getting advice thrown in with more Dorothies and cans of slugicide—guaranteed free of arsenic—and packets of seed. 1931 November 13, M. Southern, “Alien”, in The Manchester Guardian, number 26,580, page 16, column 1:
   • No experimental work has been conducted in New Zealand to determine the relative value of this compound as compared with other “slugicides,” but the writer has found it useful in checking an outbreak of slugs found to be infesting field cabbages. 1937, New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, page 280:

Forms