SLIPPERY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Slippery

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/slˈɪpəri/ /slˈɪpri/ Listen

adjective

Slippery adj.

Having the quality opposite to adhesiveness; allowing or causing anything to slip or move smoothly, rapidly, and easily upon the surface; smooth; glib; as, oily substances render things slippery.

Not affording firm ground for confidence; as, a slippery promise. "The slippery tops of human state."

Not easily held; liable or apt to slip away. "The slippery god will try to loose his hold."

Liable to slip; not standing firm.

Unstable; changeable; mutable; uncertain; inconstant; fickle. "The slippery state of kings."

Uncertain in effect.

Wanton; unchaste; loose in morals.

Slippery elm. (Bot.)

(a)

An American tree (Ulmus fulva) with a mucilagenous and slightly aromatic inner bark which is sometimes used medicinally; also, the inner bark itself.

(b)

A malvaceous shrub (Fremontia Californica); so called on the Pacific coast.

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Etymology of 'Slippery'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Slippery" Quotes from Famous Books

... of Civilis with Rome contains a remarkable foreshadowing of the future conflict with Spain, through which the Batavian republic, fifteen centuries later, was to be founded. The characters, the events, the amphibious battles, desperate sieges, slippery alliances, the traits of generosity, audacity and cruelty, the generous confidence, the broken faith seem so closely to repeat themselves, that History appears to present the self-same drama played over and over again, with but a change of actors and of costume. ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Mr. Winkle, trembling violently, and clutching hold of Sam's arms with the grasp of a drowning man. 'How slippery it ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... highest revel we knew. Above all the public heaps of them, the high-piled receptacles at every turn, touched the street as with a sort of southern plenty; the note of the rejected and scattered fragments, the memory of the slippery skins and rinds and kernels with which the old dislocated flags were bestrown, is itself endeared to me and contributes a further pictorial grace. We ate everything in those days by the bushel and the barrel, as from stores ...

— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... of the peasants; "we found him under Pfaffenwand. He must have been coming from Engstlensee Alp; how much farther the good God alone knows. The paths are slippery this wet weather, and he had no guide, or there was no guide to ...

— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... Ardan, turning with a smile to M'Nicholl; "no use in trying to catch Barby; slippery as an eel, he has an answer for everything. Still I have a theory on the subject myself, which I think it no harm to ventilate. It is this: The Selenites have never sent us any projectile at all, simply because they had no gunpowder: being older and wiser than we, they were never such fools ...

— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

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