The cabbage based salad item which was previously known as coleslaw is now definitely just called slaw, the Slaw Marketing Board confirmed recently. The use of the term coleslaw is current among 49% of the population, while the term slaw is used by 51% of the population. So that’s that.
The Slaw Marketing Board said they’ve been trying to make this change for a while, due to coleslaw sounding a bit like cold sore, which then makes people think of herpes, which then makes people think of the joke: What’s the difference between love and herpes? Herpes is forever.
This then makes people think of the 1970s when you’d see coleslaw a couple of times a year at a picnic and it would be a pallid vinegary affair with not much carrot and the cabbage would have been grown by someone called Cecil or Royston with hairy ears. Nowadays you find slaw with all sorts of things added to it (sultanas, avocado, beetroot, tiny waxed moustaches) and it having been chopped much more coarsely, in the style of an argument in which you’re promised a better standard of living but actually get a worse one.