Slant

How to spell slant

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slant

What does slant mean?

1. verbTo lie or move at an angle rather than straight up or level; to slope.
2. verbTo present information so that it favours a particular view rather than staying neutral.
3. nounA sloping direction or surface, or a particular viewpoint or bias on a subject.

Slant in a sentence

• verb

  The afternoon light began to slant across the kitchen floor.

• verb

  Some outlets deliberately slant their coverage to please advertisers.

• noun

  The writer gave the dull statistics a fresh slant that readers enjoyed.

• verb

  Heavy rain can slant sideways when the wind is strong.

• verb

  The report seemed to slant every figure in the company's favour.

• noun

  The roof has a steep slant to shed winter snow.

Where does slant come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Slant arose in late Middle English as an alteration of an earlier form 'slent', which English took from a Scandinavian source; compare the Norwegian 'slenta', meaning to slope, fall sideways, or slide. The original sense was thoroughly physical: to move or lean off the vertical, the way rain falls at an angle or a roof pitches down. From that literal idea of a sloping line, English speakers extended the word in the early 1900s to describe a point of view that 'leans' one way, giving us the modern sense of a biased angle on a story. The unexpected initial cluster comes from this northern Germanic heritage rather than from Latin or French, which is why the word feels blunt and plain rather than ornate. Helpfully for spellers, slant is written exactly as it sounds, with a clean 's-l' opening and a hard 't' close, so the main thing to remember is its single 'n' and the simple four-letter core.

How the word is built

• slant (single root, from a Scandinavian verb meaning to slope or slide sideways); no prefix or suffix