As I prepared to take the kitchen scraps to the compost barrel this morning I said, "I'm going to slop the hogs." It then occurred to me that I'd not heard anyone say that since I was five years old. Is slop still a word in use, or is it archaic? Does anyone else have a slop bucket, or are they all now called compost containers?

We generally call the "slop bucket" supper.

It's been a while since I've been on a working farm or ranch and seen hogs being raised, but I'm sure those folks still use the word slop.

We certainly use it - usually as a comment on the quality of a meal - but mostly in a farming context in the literal sense.

We did not have hogs on the farm I grew up on, so I'd not seen it used that way. However, I think it's still used to describe food, "That's just 'slop!'" Or we often use the adjective, "sloppy," don't we? "That is 'sloppy' handwriting!"

There are almost 8M google hits for "slop," though there are 42M for "sloppy."

Do you often find that after we talk about something here, the same word or concept comes up in another context? That happens to me a lot - just today a headline in the Tribune was: "Race to the Slop." It is talking about how the White Sox and Cubs are racing about who will have a worse record in 2013. It looks like the White Sox won this one. When the Cubs play the White Sox, they call it the Crosstown Classic. The Trib proposes that we rename it to the Losstown Classic.

This is a well known illusion akin to the recency illusion. It isn't that the word or concept suddenly starts coming up more it's that the discussion has put it in the front of your mind so that you notice it more.
The recency illusion is very similar in that you start noticing how often something is used and realise that you never noticed it before so you incorrectly assume that the usage has increased dramatically when what has really increased is your perception of it.

Once you start noticing something it's hard to stop noticing it.

I suppose, Bob, but it sure seems like it just crops up after we've discussed it.