Lug

I needed the word to describe the little semi-circular sticky out things, either solid or made from a wire that you have on the edge of a sieve, strainer or colander where you want the item to sit in a bigger bowl, jug or pan, with a space beneath for the liquor whatever you are sieving or straining can gather, and the debris remain in the sieve, strainer or colander. I just couldn’t think what the little lips might be called… so I went to ask the man who knows many things… and lugs, he decided, lugs… so I shall use lugs. (If you read my book ‘Raddy and Syl’ you’ll find the scene where I use lugs!)

Then I thought what a funny word, lug is and decided to investigate. Apparently there are a lot of places called Lug… villages in Poland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzogevina and  Croatia; also a suburb in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a settlement in Croatia, and a municipality in Germany.

As I found in searching for the word associated with sieves and colanders, a lug can be a sticky out thing on a firearm and a stud on the bottom of a boot or shoe, part of a drum, a bolt, a knob, a protrusion, a lug nut, a leather loop, a vegetable box… and obviously ears – human ears! My dad often called ears lugholes! Another slang use for lug is for a stupid person. Lugs are also associated with bicycles, sails – lugsail, the tread of a tyre, a unit of measurement, a lugworm which fishermen use as bait, and Lugh is a Celtic god.

To lug means to drag or pull or heave or haul something along, usually jerking it with difficulty – and it is maybe from this that the noun lug came, to lug someone by their lugs (ears) perhaps. There is an old Scandinavian word which is similar and which means to pull by the hair (there is also a Scandinavian word which is similar meaning a lock of hair – are lug and lock connected? I shall have to look into this further!). From this word lug meaning to pull, the word luggage may have been derived.

OK… so now I have the word, back to the writing!