slime
Americannoun
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slimes
plural
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thin, glutinous mud.
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any ropy or viscous liquid matter, especially of a foul kind.
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a viscous secretion of animal or vegetable origin.
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Also called slimeball. Slang. a repulsive or despicable person.
verb (used with object)
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slimes,
present (3rd person singular)
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slimed,
past participle, past
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sliming
present participle
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to cover or smear with or as if with slime.
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to remove slime from, as fish for canning.
noun
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soft thin runny mud or filth
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any moist viscous fluid, esp when noxious or unpleasant
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a mucous substance produced by various organisms, such as fish, slugs, and fungi
verb
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to cover with slime
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to remove slime from (fish) before canning
Usage
What else does slime mean? What’s up, slime? Slime is slang for a (usually male) "friend," often used as a term of address, like dude or bro.
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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slimesimple
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slimessimple
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have slimedperfect
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has slimedperfect
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am slimingprogressive
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are slimingprogressive
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is slimingprogressive
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have been slimingperfect progressive
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has been slimingperfect progressive
Past
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slimedsimple
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had slimedperfect
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was slimingprogressive
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were slimingprogressive
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had been slimingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of slime
before 1000; Middle English slyme, Old English slīm; cognate with Dutch slijm, German Schleim, Old Norse slīm
Explanation
Slime is a substance that's slippery, damp, and gooey, like the slime that grows on the bottom on a swimming pool if it's not cleaned often enough. People are generally disgusted by slime, so if your dinner guest comments that your famous spinach soufflé looks like slime, you'll probably feel insulted. Like your spinach soufflé, slime is usually greenish in color, though the clear stuff a snail leaves behind is slime too. If you slime something, you cover it in a slimy substance. Experts believe that slime comes from the Old English lim, "sticky substance," which shares a root with the Russian slimak, or "snail."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The Los Angeles-based company runs a marketplace where sellers host live video auctions, hawking sports cards, clothes, slime and plants to viewers who bid in real time.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Only a few days after the pool was refilled, though, it reverted what it always is: a filthy slime pit that nevertheless does an adequate job of its primary objective: reflecting.
From Slate ● Jun. 19, 2026
Glow worms, slime moulds and rare lichens are among 1,109 species discovered in just one corner of Scotland's rainforest.
From BBC ● May 21, 2026
"The key innovation in the biosynthesis of tagatose was in finding the slime mold Gal1P enzyme and splicing it into our production bacteria," said Nair.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 13, 2026
I keep my slime in teeny little Tupperware containers—the stacks keep getting bigger.
From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper
To this day, many biological slimes haven’t been researched enough to know the details of their structure and behavior.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 28, 2023
Familiar monsters, from slimes to sabercats, abound, but now the kids can recruit the beasts to help them hunt for loot.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 5, 2022
Compared with naturally occurring slimes, artificial slime has no practical use.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 30, 2022
It's a pure troll, meant to be so beyond the pale that even responding to it slimes the person falsely accused.
From Salon ● Apr. 20, 2022
It seems that one of Ebola’s paths goes from the dead to the living, winding in trickles of uncoagulated blood and slimes that come out of the dead body.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
In his lead single for the album, the musician used a photo of Halle Berry being slimed at the Kids Choice Awards without her consent.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2023
Only to tyrannize behind the scenes and invariably whack others for his mistakes — coaches, general managers, executives by the score finding themselves slurred and slimed and used as human shields.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 4, 2022
“He slimed the driver’s seat of my car,” she says.
From The Verge ● May 28, 2022
He was selected the AFC’s defensive player of the week Wednesday and got slimed leaving practice Thursday after being chosen Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime NVP.”
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
He was a stunted little man with knobby knees and a balding head and a nose like a used pencil eraser, and he was stark naked and slimed head to toe with sticky, translucent gel.
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
There are close-ups of hands kneading dough, a snail sliming its way up a window and Cathy prodding a jellied fish with her finger.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026
But an end to the lurid, sliming, morale-breaking, goodwill-sapping 24 years of Snyder’s ownership is surely worth a parade.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2023
Mr. Parnell, a decorated Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan, has denied wrongdoing and called on his rival to quit the GOP primary race for sliming his family.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 9, 2021
But basic cable package viewers at home were immune to the smell, and the response from people who saw the sliming was overwhelmingly positive.
From The Verge ● Aug. 23, 2017
The beast’s green tongue rasped across her visor, sliming the lower section.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
