Slipper

How to spell slipper

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce slipper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does slipper mean?

1. nounA soft, comfortable shoe worn indoors.

Slipper in a sentence

• He kept one warm slipper by the back door for cold mornings.

• She searched under the sofa for her missing slipper.

Where does slipper come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Slipper comes straight from the native English verb 'slip', which traces back to Old English and a wider Germanic family of words meaning 'to move smoothly or slide'. The footwear sense was recorded from the 1400s and captures the whole idea of the shoe: it is something you simply slip your foot into without fastening. The -er ending here marks the object that performs the action, the same pattern seen in 'cover' or 'cooker'. Because the root vowel is short, the consonant doubles before the suffix, giving the double p of slipper; the same doubling rule explains 'slipped' and 'slipping'. The word has stayed close to its plain Germanic roots, which is why its spelling holds few surprises.

How the word is built

• slip (to slide on easily)
• -er (noun suffix, thing that does)