slack Alice
- noun
- Offensive
:
vago
- My colleague is a real slack Alice when it comes to deadlines.
Examples
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My friends call me slack Alice because I’m always late to everything.
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Don’t be a slack Alice or you might lose your job.
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After several warnings, the manager fired the slack Alice of the team.
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Don't be such a slack Alice!
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My colleague is a real slack Alice when it comes to completing tasks on time.
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Don’t be a slack Alice or you might miss important deadlines.
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After several warnings, the manager decided to let go of the slack Alice in the team.
Synonyms
43
7.6
A person who works slowly and avoids effort
33
4.6
A person who avoids work and often does very little
12
7.0
A person who is lazy and does not want to work
5
5.8
A person who avoids work and does very little
2
7.0
A person who avoids work and does very little
2
8.6
A person who avoids work and wastes time
1
7.2
A person who avoids work and prefers to rest
1
7.1
A person who moves slowly and wastes time
1
9.9
A person who avoids work and does very little
A person who is very lazy and not responsible
A person who wastes time on small unimportant tasks instead of doing useful work
A person who is lazy and avoids work
Antonyms
How Lazy
Surface Forms
Morphology
slack + Alice
The phrase is fully compositional: 'slack' (lazy, negligent) applied to a personal name signals a person who is habitually lazy, so a B1 learner who knows 'slack' and recognizes a name will infer the meaning. Using a proper name as the target of an adjective is a common, cross-linguistic pattern (e.g., 'lazy John'), so the overall sense is immediately predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Slack Alice may come from using a common name, Alice, to stand for a typical person; the word slack means 'loose', so imagine a task left undone because Alice did not finish it. That's why the phrase means 'a lazy or careless person'.