slither

From Middle English slitheren, alteration of slideren (“to slither, creep”), from Old English slidrian (“to slip, slide, slither”), from Proto-West Germanic *slidrōn (“to slide, slither”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleydʰ- (“to slip”), equivalent to slide +‎ -er (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Dutch slidderen (“to slip, wriggle, slither”), German schlittern (“to slither, skid”). More at slide.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈslɪð.ə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈslɪð.ɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɪðə(ɹ)

slither (third-person singular simple present slithers, present participle slithering, simple past and past participle slithered)

1. (intransitive) To move about smoothly and from side to side.
   • 1981, Lawrence Kasdan, Raiders of the Lost Ark:

     [Indiana:] Wave it at anything that slithers.
     [Marion:] The whole place is slithering!

   • 2023 October 12, HarryBlank, “Fire in the Hole”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 22 May 2024:

     She also had a map of the building, not that it was very large, and she'd memorized the layout. The guard station would be right around the corner, and there ought to be a counter about the height of a half-wall looking out over the corridor with only a bulletin board on the opposite wall. She crouched down, and slithered left.

2. (intransitive) To slide.
   • 1954 February, Trevor Holloway, “Canada's Transcontinental Routes”, in Railway Magazine, page 128:

     Some snow slides recorded have exceeded a million tons and slithered down the mountain-side at a speed of 60 miles an hour.

   • 2003, J. Flash, An American Savage:

     I bent down and with both hands I scooped up as much of this pissshit as I could. The green and brown clump felt like Jello as it dripped down all over my clothes. It was slithering through inbetween^[sic] my fingers.

slither

1. (archaic) Slithery; slippery.

slither (uncountable)

1. A limestone rubble.
2. (nonstandard, see usage notes) A sliver.

The use of slither to mean sliver, which is prevalent especially in Britain (where th-fronting is becoming more and more prevalent), is considered by many to be an error, though at least one major dictionary merely labels it "informal".

• sliver

• Hirtles, Hitlers, Shitler, relisht