Other forms: slipped, slips, slipping
To slip is to lose your footing on something smooth and go sliding before you can stop it. Wet tiles at the swimming pool, black ice on the front step, a scatter of leaves on the path.
Slip carries that same easy, unnoticed movement everywhere else it goes. You slip out of a party without saying goodbye, slip a note under a door, slip your shoes off in the hall. Things slip out of your hands, and time slips away while you are not watching. When standards slip they quietly get worse, and a slip of the tongue is a word that escaped before you could catch it. As a noun, a slip is also a small piece of paper: a betting slip, a payslip, a slip with a phone number on it.
1verbslipTo slide by accident on a smooth or wet surface and lose your balance.
“She slipped on the wet floor and grabbed the counter to stay upright.”
2verbmoveTo move somewhere quietly and quickly so that nobody notices.
“He slipped out of the meeting while the others were arguing.”
3verbputTo put or pass something somewhere smoothly, quickly or secretly.
“She slipped the envelope into his coat pocket without a word.”
4verbpositionTo slide out of position, or out of somebody's hold.
“The glass slipped from his fingers and broke on the tiles.”
5verbfallTo fall to a lower level or standard.
“His marks have slipped badly since Christmas.”
6nounnarrowA small narrow piece of paper.
“The cashier handed her a slip with the total printed on it.”
7nounmistakeA small mistake made by accident rather than by ignorance.
“Calling her by his ex-wife's name was a slip he never lived down.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Slip comes through Middle English slippen, probably borrowed from Middle Low German slippen, from a Proto-Germanic verb slipjaną meaning to glide. Behind that sits a Proto-Indo-European root sleyb-, which meant slimy as well as sliding. The Old English word slipor, slippery, grew from the same family, so the wet and the sliding were one idea from the start.
Proto-West Germanic
*slippjan
Old Saxon
*slippian
Middle Low German
slippen
Middle English
slippen
English, today
slip
Built from
From Middle English slippen, from Middle Low German slippen, from Old Saxon slippian, from Proto-West Germanic slippjan. From Middle English slippen, probably from Middle Low German slippen, from Old Saxon slippian, from Proto-West Germanic slippjan, from Proto-Germanic slipjaną (“to glide”), an iterative form of slīpaną (“to slip, slide”), from Proto-Indo-European sleyb- (“slimy; to slide”). Possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European slewbʰ- (“slip, slide”), or related to Proto-Germanic slībaną (“to split”); related to Old English slipor (“slippery”). Cognate with stq slipje (“to slip”), Dutch slippen (“to slip”), German Low German slippen.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA