Slide

How to spell slide

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slide

What does slide mean?

1. verbTo move smoothly and continuously over a surface, often because it is slippery.
2. nounA smooth sloping surface or object for sliding down, or a single image in a presentation or a glass plate for a microscope.

Slide in a sentence

• verb

  The children love to slide down the icy path on their way to school.

• noun

  The lecturer clicked to the next slide in the presentation.

• verb

  Loose papers can slide off a polished desk if you knock the table.

• noun

  The lab technician placed the sample on a glass slide under the microscope.

Where does slide come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English verb slīdan, which meant to glide, slip, or move smoothly over a surface. It comes from a Germanic root that also gave rise to related words about slippery movement in the neighbouring languages, and it is distantly connected to the same family that produced 'sled' and 'sledge'. For most of its history the word was purely a verb describing motion, and only later did it pick up noun senses, such as the smooth chute children play on and, from the nineteenth century, the photographic and microscope kinds of slide. The spelling has stayed reassuringly regular, with the long 'i' marked by the familiar silent 'e' at the end. Because it follows the ordinary glide and ride rhyme pattern, it almost never trips writers up.

How the word is built

• slide (from Old English slīdan: to glide or slip smoothly)