slither
/ˈslɪðə/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.53 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "[Indiana:] Wave it at anything that slithers. [Marion:] The whole place is slithering!"
- "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."
- "Some snow slides recorded have exceeded a million tons and slithered down the mountain-side at a speed of 60 miles an hour."
- "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."
- "On Sunday night’s episode of “The White Lotus,” Walton Goggins’ character Rick throws open the doors to cages containing a slither of snakes, resulting in another character being hospitalized for a snakebite."
- "And from the hedge came the silken slither of snakes about to lather with foam and strike some legless sheep or ox left by the mutinous pack."
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 *h₃sleydʰ- (“to slip”), equivalent to slide + -er (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Dutch slidderen (“to slip, wriggle, slither”), German schlittern (“to slither, skid”). More at slide.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₃sleydʰ-, slitheren, slidrian, *slidrōn
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈslɪðə/
- British English: /ˈslɪðə/