slide

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

• intransitive verb To move over a surface while maintaining smooth continuous contact.
• intransitive verb To participate in a sport that involves such movement.
• intransitive verb To lose a secure footing or positioning; slip.
• intransitive verb To pass smoothly and quietly; glide.
• intransitive verb Baseball To drop down from a running into a lying or diving position when approaching a base so as to avoid being tagged out.
• intransitive verb To be ignored or not dealt with; drop.
• intransitive verb To decrease.
• intransitive verb To become less favorable or less desirable.
• intransitive verb To cause to slide or slip.
• intransitive verb To place covertly or deftly.
• noun A sliding movement or action.
• noun A smooth, usually inclined surface or track for sliding.
• noun A playground apparatus for children to slide on, typically consisting of a smooth chute climbed onto by means of a ladder.
• noun A part that operates by sliding, as the U-shaped section of tube on a trombone that is moved to change the pitch.
• noun A period of decline or loss.
• noun An image on a transparent base for projection on a screen.
• noun A small glass plate for mounting specimens to be examined under a microscope.
• noun A fall of a mass of rock, earth, or snow down a slope; an avalanche or landslide.
• noun A backless shoe with an open toe.
• noun A slight portamento used in violin playing, passing quickly from one note to another.
• noun An ornamentation consisting of two grace notes approaching the main note.
• noun A small metal or glass tube worn over a finger or held in the hand, used in playing bottleneck-style guitar.
• noun The bottleneck style of guitar playing.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To move bodily along a surface without ceasing to touch it, the same points of the moving body remaining always in contact with that surface; move continuously along a surface without rolling: as, to slide down hill.
• Specifically, to glide over the surface of snow or ice on the feet, or (in former use) on skates, or on a sled, toboggan, or the like.
• To slip or pass smoothly; glide on ward.
• To pass gradually from one state or condition to another.
• In music, to pass or progress from tone to tone without perceptible step or skip—that is, by means of a portamento.
• To go without thought or attention; pass unheeded or without attention or consideration; be unheeded or disregarded; take care of itself (or of themselves): used only with let: as, to let things slide.
• To slip away: as, the ladder slid from under him.
• Especially To slip away quietly or in such a way as not to attract attention; make off quietly.
• To disappear just when wanted, as by the police; “slope”; “skip.”
• To make a slip; commit a fault; backslide. See sliding, n., 4.
• A scale for raising or lowering imposts in proportion to the fall and rise in the prices of the goods.
• A scale of wages which rises and falls with the market price of the goods turned out.
• A scale of prices for manufactured goods which is regulated by the rise and fall in price of the raw material, etc.
• Same as sliding-rule.
• Synonyms and
• Slide, Slip, Glide. We slide or slip on a smooth surface: we slide by intention; we slip in spite of ourselves. In the Bible slide is used for slip. Slide generally refers to a longer movement: as, to slide down hill; to slip on the ice. We glide by a smooth and easy motion, as in a boat over or through the water.
• To cause to glide or move along a surface without bounding, rolling, stepping, etc.; thrust or push along in contact with a surface.
• To slip gently; push, thrust, or put quietly or imperceptibly.
• To glide over or through.
• noun An inclined plane up which hay is drawn by horse-power on to a rick by means of a net and a cable running over the top of the rick. The net, when emptied, is drawn back by a horse with a long rope. This method is practised on very large ranches.
• noun A smooth and easy passage.
• noun Flow; even course; fluency.