slippery
part of speech
adjective (slippery, more slippery, most slippery)
meaning for a pupil
1) Slippery means smooth, wet or icy so that it is hard to hold or to stand on without sliding. tree →
2) A slippery person cannot be trusted and is hard to catch or pin down. tree →
sense in the lessons
In safety, slippery floors, ice, wet rocks and mud cause falls: walk, do not run, near pools; wipe up spills; wear shoes with grip. Signs say «Caution: slippery floor». In science, slippery surfaces have low friction. Phrases: «slippery slope» (one small step that leads to worse things), «as slippery as an eel».
examples
- The floor is slippery after mopping. tree →
- Walk carefully — the path is slippery with ice. tree →
- Don't run by the pool; it's slippery. tree →
- The fish was too slippery to hold. tree →
- Soap makes your hands slippery. tree →
- Wet leaves make the road slippery for bikes. tree →
- The rocks by the river are slippery. tree →
- The slippery thief escaped again. tree →
- The rock was slippery as a ball, and they had to crawl rather than climb. tree →
note
Comparison: «more slippery» is more common, but «slipperier» is also seen. The verb is «slip». Spelled with double p. Low friction = slippery; high friction = grippy.
In the corpora
- Smooth cartilage and a slippery fluid let the ends of bones glide in a joint.
- Banana skins are slippery because of a gel on the inside; scientists who measured it won the joke Ig Nobel Prize in 2014.
- Leatherback turtles eat huge amounts of jellyfish, and their throats are lined with spikes that keep the slippery food from sliding back out.
- She forgot the key on the table; the glass leg is too slippery to climb, so she cries.
- Soap is slightly alkaline and feels slippery; strong alkalis like oven cleaner can burn skin badly.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «slippery» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.