Other forms: slated, slates
Slate is a grey rock that splits into thin flat sheets, which is exactly why roofs are made of it. Run your eye along an old church roof, or think of a school blackboard from a hundred years ago — that is slate.
One piece of it is a slate too: the tiles on the roof, or the small writing board a child once carried to school and wiped clean each morning. That wiping gave English two set phrases, a clean slate and wipe the slate clean, both meaning your past mistakes no longer count against you. As a colour word, slate is a cool blue-grey — slate grey skies, a slate blue coat. Britain has an extra verb: to slate a film or a restaurant is to review it savagely. In American politics a slate is a list of candidates standing together.
1nounslateA grey rock that splits into flat sheets.
“The cottage has a slate roof that has lasted two hundred years.”
2nounsingleA single flat piece of this rock used for roofing.
“Three slates came off in the storm.”
3nounsmallA small writing board used before paper was cheap.
“The children worked their sums on a slate and rubbed them out.”
4adjectivecolourOf a cool blue-grey colour.
“She painted the kitchen door slate grey.”
5verbcriticiseTo criticise something harshly in public.
“The critics slated his second novel.”
6nounlistA list of candidates put forward together.
“The party announced a full slate of candidates for the council.”
Slate came from Old French esclate, a form of esclat — a broken piece, a shard — from esclater, to break or shatter. English later borrowed that same French word again as éclat. Further back lie Frankish and Proto-Germanic words for splitting and cutting up. The rock is named for the one thing it does: it splits.
Old French
esclate
Middle English
sclate
English, today
slate
Built from
The is derived from Middle English sclate, slat, slate (“type of rock; roofing slate; writing slate”), from Old French esclate, a form of esclat (“broken piece, shard”) (modern French éclat), from Old French esclater (“to break, shatter”), from Frankish slaitijan (“to split, break”), from Proto-Germanic slaitijaną, the of slītaną (“to cut up, split”); further etymology unknown (see the Proto-Germanic entry for a discussion). a doublet of éclat and slat. The and are derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA