Slice

How to spell slice

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slice

What does slice mean?

1. nounA thin, flat piece cut from something larger, such as bread, cake, or fruit.
2. verbTo cut something into thin, flat pieces.

Slice in a sentence

• noun

  She spread butter on a warm slice of toast.

• verb

  Use a sharp knife to slice the bread evenly.

• noun

  Each slice of the cake was carefully portioned for the guests.

• verb

  She will slice the tomatoes for the salad.

Where does slice come from?

Language of origin: French

Slice entered English in the 1300s from the Old French esclice, which meant a splinter or a thin chip broken off something. That French word came in turn from the verb esclicier, 'to splinter' or 'to shatter', which the French had borrowed from a Frankish Germanic root slizzan meaning 'to split' or 'to tear apart'. The same Germanic family lies behind the English verb 'slit', so the connection between a slice and a clean splitting cut is genuine and ancient. The original idea of a fragment broken or split away gradually narrowed to the modern sense of a thin, deliberately cut piece, especially of bread, cake, or fruit. The spelling is reassuringly regular: the soft 's' sound of the 'c' before 'e' is exactly the pattern English keeps in 'price' and 'twice'.

How the word is built

• slice (single root; from Old French esclice 'splinter, fragment')