sleet

[ sleet ]
See synonyms for sleet on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. precipitation in the form of ice pellets created by the freezing of rain as it falls (distinguished from hail2).

  1. Chiefly British. a mixture of rain and snow.

verb (used without object)
  1. to send down sleet.

  2. to fall as or like sleet.

Origin of sleet

1
First recorded in 1250–1300; (for the noun) Middle English slete; akin to Low German slote, German Schlossen “hail”; (for the verb) Middle English sleten, derivative of the noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use sleet in a sentence

  • Here the first winter sleets and snows fall and lie, and here the spring frost lingers last unthawed.

    Jude the Obscure | Thomas Hardy
  • Winter poured down its snows and its sleets upon Lees shelterless men in the trenches.

    The Dixie Book of Days | Matthew Page Andrews

British Dictionary definitions for sleet

sleet

/ (sliːt) /


noun
  1. partly melted falling snow or hail or (esp US) partly frozen rain

  2. mainly US the thin coat of ice that forms when sleet or rain freezes on cold surfaces

verb
  1. (intr) to fall as sleet

Origin of sleet

1
C13: from Germanic; compare Middle Low German slōten hail, Middle High German slōze, German Schlossen hailstones

Derived forms of sleet

  • sleety, adjective

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for sleet

sleet

[ slēt ]


  1. Precipitation that falls to earth in the form of frozen or partially frozen raindrops, often when the temperature is near the freezing point. Sleet usually leaves the cloud in the form of snow that melts as it passes through warm layers of air during its descent. The raindrops and partially melted snowflakes then freeze in the colder layers nearer the earth before striking the ground as pellets of ice, which usually bounce. By contrast,hail forms by the accumulation of layers of ice on the hailstone as it moves up and down in the cloud, and hailstones can become much larger than sleet pellets. The word sleet is also used informally to describe a mixture of snow, sleet, and rain.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.