Slight

How to spell slight

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slight

What does slight mean?

1. adjectiveSmall in degree, amount, or importance.
2. verbTo treat someone as unimportant by insulting or ignoring them.
3. nounAn act of disrespect that treats someone as unimportant.

Slight in a sentence

• adjective

  There was a slight delay before the train left the platform.

• verb

  He did not mean to slight his colleague by skipping her presentation.

• noun

  Being left off the invitation felt like a deliberate slight.

• adjective

  The report showed only a slight increase in monthly sales.

• verb

  Managers who slight their best staff often lose them.

• noun

  She took the missed thank-you as a personal slight.

Where does slight come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Slight traces back to the Old Norse adjective slettr, meaning 'smooth, level, or even', which entered northern English speech during the Viking settlements. The Middle English form sliht at first carried that idea of smoothness and plainness, and from 'plain' it drifted toward 'slender' and then 'small in degree or importance'. The verb and noun senses, meaning to treat someone as unimportant and the act of doing so, grew naturally out of that core notion of belittling something to nothing. The same Germanic family gave German schlicht, meaning 'plain' or 'simple', which shows how steady the underlying sense has stayed across the languages. A real spelling trap is the near-twin sleight, as in 'sleight of hand', which sounds identical but comes from a different Norse root meaning cunning; slight is the one about smallness and snubbing.

How the word is built

• slight (a single root from Old Norse slettr meaning smooth or level; no separable prefix or suffix)