Other forms: slicks
Slick means smoothly skilful, sometimes too smooth to be trusted. A slick presentation, a slick operator, slick marketing.
The compliment and the suspicion are both in the word, and only tone decides which one is meant. It also means slippery: the road is slick with rain, slick with oil. As a noun, an oil slick is a layer of spilled oil on water, and it is the usual news phrase. Note slick back, of hair, and that in American English slick is used more admiringly than in British English.
1adjectiveslickSmoothly skilful, sometimes suspiciously so.
“The presentation was slick and told you nothing.”
2adjectiveslipperySlippery.
“The steps were slick with rain and somebody went down.”
3nounlayerA layer of spilled oil on water.
“Seabirds covered in oil were rescued from the slick after the tanker ran aground.”
slick is a quality of smoothness.
Old English slic meant smooth or sleek — and sleek is the same word, split in two. The idea of something too smooth to grip carried straight into the sense of somebody too smooth to trust.
Proto-Indo-European
*sleyg-
Proto-Germanic
*slīkaz — sleek, smooth
Old English
slīc — sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick
Middle English
slicke
English, today
slick
Built from
From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English slīc (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic slīkaz (“sleek, smooth”), from Proto-Indo-European sleyg-, sleyǵ- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives