Is “URL slug” a completely arbitrary word? Or does it stand for something? I used the word in a conversation with someone and when they asked me why it’s called that I realized I didn’t know.
I know what it means of course.
The Stack Overflow tag for [slug] currently defines it as:
part of a URL that makes it more human readable or SEO-friendly, but without necessarily being required by the web server.
and WordPress.org defines it as:
A slug is a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly version of the post title (which has been automatically generated by WordPress), but a slug can be anything you like. Slugs are meant to be used with permalinks as they help describe what the content at the URL is.
So – does the word “slug” in a URL have an actual meaning behind it? What is the etymology or meaning of a URL slug?