slippery
Americanadjective
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tending or liable to cause slipping or sliding, as ice, oil, a wet surface, etc..
a slippery road.
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tending to slip from the hold or grasp or from position.
a slippery rope.
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likely to slip away or escape.
slippery prospects.
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not to be depended on; fickle; shifty, tricky, or deceitful.
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unstable or insecure, as conditions.
a slippery situation.
adjective
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causing or tending to cause objects to slip
a slippery road
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liable to slip from the grasp, a position, etc
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not to be relied upon; cunning and untrustworthy
a slippery character
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(esp of a situation) liable to change; unstable
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a course of action that will lead to disaster or failure
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of slippery
1525–35; alteration of slipper 2; compare Low German slipperig; see -y 1
Explanation
Slippery things are slimy or wet, or for some other reason cause you to slide on them. A slippery fish is hard to hold in your hand, and a slippery path is easy to slip on. You should drive slowly and cautiously when the road is slippery after it starts to sleet. And your hands may get slippery with sweat when you're nervous about a job interview. You can also use this adjective in a figurative way, to mean "tricky" or "unreliable," so you might complain about your slippery brother, who always manages to disappear right before it's time to take the trash out or load the dishwasher.
Vocabulary lists containing slippery
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 robots’ pincer-like hands make it challenging to grasp slippery and heavy ceramics.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
The births follow the zoo's success last November in breeding the Atewa slippery frog, another critically endangered species from the same forest, which had also never been bred in captivity before.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
It’s a slippery slope that leads to some of the biggest financial scandals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
When wet, it gets dangerously slick and slippery.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
Three or four empty bullock carts passed us on the way to collect the broken stones, the bullocks drawing them struggling to get through the morass, their hides slippery with rain.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
Keep these traits in check the next time you find yourself in a horror film scenario: curiosity—the genre’s original sin—and dissatisfaction, its slipperier cousin.
From Salon ● Mar. 31, 2025
The iPhone SE is slightly taller, wider, and heavier than the Mini — not to mention slipperier with its rounded corners.
From The Verge ● Sep. 8, 2022
Over time, shampoo, soap, conditioners and other products can build up and make the tub slipperier than it used to be.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 25, 2022
He struggled to find consistent velocity with his pitches and quality grip with the MLB baseball, which had smaller seams and a slipperier cover.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 4, 2021
Faster, slipperier, she was sliding through the woods and then down to the lakeshore.
From "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich
The new method proved exceptionally effective, as the team created the slipperiest liquid surface in the world.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2023
As he explains in his memoir, Ronnie was “a conman, fantasist, occasional jailbird, and my father. . . . Ronnie’s life was spent walking on the thinnest, slipperiest ice you can imagine.”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 14, 2020
East End Underworld by Raphael Samuel Published in 1981, this is the story of Arthur Harding, who was born in 1896 and became known as “the slipperiest character in Brick Lane”.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 7, 2019
But this relatively new double-tap, fave-thirsty existence that connects us to one another, it portends, is also the slipperiest of slopes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2017
Among the slipperiest of all is AIDS, which evolves new antigens even as it sits within an individual patient, thereby eventually overwhelming his or her immune system.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
