Other forms: slimes
Slime is a soft unpleasant slippery substance. Covered in slime, green slime, a layer of slime.
In nature it is produced by slugs, snails, fish and algae, and it is functional rather than disgusting: fish slime reduces drag and carries antibodies. Slime is also a children's toy, a stretchy homemade compound that had an extraordinary moment around 2017. Note slimy, which is the adjective for both the substance and the person; and slime mould, which is a single-celled organism capable of solving mazes.
1nounslimeA soft unpleasant slippery substance.
“The snail left a trail of slime across the garden path.”
slime is a slippery substance.
Old English slim is Germanic and related to Latin limus, mud, and to slippery, slip and slick. The whole family is about smooth wet surfaces and has been for several thousand years.
Middle English
slime
Old English
slīm
English, today
slime
From Old English slīm. From Middle English slime, slyme, slim, slym, from Old English slīm, from Proto-West Germanic slīm, from Proto-Germanic slīmą, from Proto-Indo-European sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”). Cognates include stq Sliem, Dutch slijm, German Schleim (“mucus, slime”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk slim, Swedish slem, Faroese and Icelandic slím (“slime”), Latin limus (“mud”), Ancient Greek λίμνη (“marsh”). The slang sense of "to murder" spread among Black communites throughout the 2010s and gained prominence on TikTok around 2021.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA