Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A thick, sticky, slippery substance.
  • noun Biology A mucous substance secreted by certain animals, such as catfishes and slugs.
  • noun Soft moist earth; mud.
  • noun A slurry containing very fine particulate matter.
  • noun Vile or disgusting matter.
  • noun Slang A despicable or repulsive person.
  • transitive verb To smear with slime.
  • transitive verb To remove slime from (fish to be canned, for example).
  • transitive verb To vilify or malign (someone), especially publicly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any soft, ropy, glutinous, or viscous substance.
  • noun Asphalt or bitumen.
  • noun A mucous, viscous, or glutinous substance exuded from the bodies of certain animals, notably fishes and mollusks: as, the slime of a snail. In some cases this slime is the secretion of a special gland, and it may on hardening form a sort of operculum. See slime-gland, clausiliumt and hibernaculum, 3 .
  • noun Figuratively, anything of a clinging and offensive nature; cringing or fawning words or actions.
  • noun In metallurgy, ore reduced to a very fine powder and held in suspension in water, so as to form a kind of thin ore-mud: generally used in the plural.
  • To cover with or as with slime; make slimy.
  • To remove slime from, as fish for canning.
  • To become slimy: acquire slime.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To smear with slime.
  • noun Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud.
  • noun Any mucilaginous substance; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive.
  • noun (Script.), Archaic Bitumen.
  • noun (Mining) Mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.
  • noun (Physiol.) A mucuslike substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See 1st Hag, 4.
  • noun a pit for the collection of slime or bitumen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.
  • noun Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals, such as snails or slugs.
  • noun figuratively, obsolete Human flesh, seen disparagingly; mere human form.
  • noun obsolete = Jew’s slime (bitumen)
  • verb transitive To coat with slime.
  • verb transitive, figuratively To besmirch or disparage.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any thick, viscous matter
  • verb cover or stain with slime

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English slīm; see lei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English slīm, from Proto-Germanic. Cognates include Dutch slijm, German Schleim ("mucus, slime"), also see Latin limus ("mud"), Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē, "marsh").

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Examples

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  • He dreamed of mellowing his pigments as the Old Masters had done--with honey, fig juice, poppy oil, and the slime of pink snails.

    --Vladimir Nabokov, 1957, Pnin, p. 67

    November 16, 2007