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slither

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

From Middle English slitheren, alteration of slideren (“to slither, creep”), from Old English slidrian (“to slip, slide, slither”), from Proto-West Germanic *slidrōn (“to slide, slither”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleydʰ- (“to slip”), equivalent to slide +‎ -er (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Dutch slidderen (“to slip, wriggle, slither”), German schlittern (“to slither, skid”). More at slide.

Pronunciation

Verb

slither (third-person singular simple present slithers, present participle slithering, simple past and past participle slithered)

  1. (intransitive) To move about smoothly and from side to side.
    • 1981, Lawrence Kasdan, Raiders of the Lost Ark:
      [Indiana:] Wave it at anything that slithers.
      [Marion:] The whole place is slithering!
    • 2023 October 12, HarryBlank, “Fire in the Hole”, in SCP Foundation‎, archived from the original on 22 May 2024:
      She also had a map of the building, not that it was very large, and she'd memorized the layout. The guard station would be right around the corner, and there ought to be a counter about the height of a half-wall looking out over the corridor with only a bulletin board on the opposite wall. She crouched down, and slithered left.
  2. (intransitive) To slide.
    • 1954 February, Trevor Holloway, “Canada's Transcontinental Routes”, in Railway Magazine, page 128:
      Some snow slides recorded have exceeded a million tons and slithered down the mountain-side at a speed of 60 miles an hour.
    • 2003, J. Flash, An American Savage:
      I bent down and with both hands I scooped up as much of this pissshit as I could. The green and brown clump felt like Jello as it dripped down all over my clothes. It was slithering through inbetween[sic] my fingers.

Derived terms

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *sleydʰ- (0 c, 8 e)

Translations

Adjective

slither

  1. (archaic) Slithery; slippery.

Noun

slither (countable and uncountable, plural slithers)

  1. A limestone rubble.
  2. (nonstandard, see usage notes) A sliver.

Usage notes

  • The use of slither to mean sliver, which is prevalent especially in Britain (where th-fronting is becoming more and more prevalent), is considered by many to be an error, though at least one major dictionary merely labels it "informal".

See also

Anagrams

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