Slick

How to spell slick

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slick

What does slick mean?

1. adjectiveSmooth and glossy, or impressively well-made and professionally finished.
2. adjectiveSmoothly clever or persuasive in a way that seems insincere.
3. nounA film of oil or similar substance spread over a surface, especially water.
4. verbTo make hair or another surface smooth and flat, usually with a substance.

Slick in a sentence

• adjective

  The agency produced a slick video that won the contract.

• adjective

  The slick salesman talked her into a far bigger loan than she needed.

• noun

  The tanker leak left an oily slick across the harbour.

• verb

  He would always slick his hair back before an interview.

• adjective

  Rain left the cobbled lane dangerously slick underfoot.

• adjective

  His answers were too slick to be entirely honest.

Where does slick come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Slick traces back to Old English, where the verb element '-slician' meant 'to make smooth or glossy', and it sits in the same Germanic family as words for sliding and gliding. Middle English carried it on as 'slike', describing something polished or smooth to the touch, and it is a close cousin of the modern word 'sleek', which split off as a separate spelling. Over the centuries the literal idea of a smooth, slippery surface broadened into figurative senses: by the 1800s a 'slick' person was one who was smoothly persuasive, even a little too glib to be trusted. The American sense of a film of oil spreading across water grew out of the same image of a glassy, smoothed surface. The spelling stays mercifully regular, since the short 'i' and the hard final 'ck' leave little room to go wrong.

How the word is built

• slick (single root, from Old English -slician 'to make smooth or glossy'); related to the adjective 'sleek'