Slicing

How to spell slicing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce slicing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does slicing mean?

1. verbCutting something into thin, flat pieces with a knife or blade.
2. verbHitting a ball so that it curves away with sideways spin, as in golf or tennis.

Slicing in a sentence

• He was slicing the bread when the phone rang.

• He kept slicing the ball into the trees off the first tee.

• Slicing the onions thinly makes them cook faster.

• A poor grip is often the reason for slicing a drive to the right.

Where does slicing come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'slice', which came into English in the 1300s from the Old French 'esclice', meaning a splinter or thin shaving of wood, and the related verb 'esclicier', to splinter or break into pieces. That French word was itself rooted in a Frankish Germanic source, 'slitan', meaning to slit or to split, which is also the distant ancestor of the modern English word 'slit'. The original idea was therefore of something split off or shaved away, which gradually narrowed to the familiar sense of cutting a thin, flat piece from a larger whole. By the time the 'ing' form is built, English follows its standard rule of dropping the silent final 'e' before the suffix, so 'slice' loses its 'e' and becomes 'slicing'; that vanished 'e' is the small spelling trap, since the soft 'c' sound is preserved by the 'i' that follows.

How the word is built

• slice (a thin flat piece)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix; the silent 'e' of slice is dropped)