Sleek

How to spell sleek

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sleek

What does sleek mean?

1. adjectiveSmooth, glossy, and stylishly streamlined in appearance.

Sleek in a sentence

• The new phone has a sleek aluminium body that fits neatly in one hand.

• Her hair looked sleek and shiny after the salon treatment.

Where does sleek come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sleek began life as a variant of the older English word 'slick', and both descend from a Germanic root meaning smooth, glossy, or slippery, related to the Middle English verb 'sliken' meaning to make smooth. The base is connected to Old Norse and other northern Germanic forms tied to the idea of a polished, gliding surface, and it shares family ties with words like 'slick' and the dialectal 'slike'. By the 1500s the spelling 'sleek' had settled into use to describe hair, fur, and surfaces that were smooth and shining, especially through grooming or oiling. Over time the sense broadened from literal glossiness to a stylish, streamlined elegance, which is how we now speak of a sleek car or a sleek design. The double meaning of physical smoothness and admirable polish is exactly why the word kept its short, clean spelling, with the long 'ee' doing the work that 'slick' does with an 'i'.

How the word is built

• sleek (single root, a variant of 'slick', from a Germanic base meaning smooth or glossy); no prefix or suffix