1 (also informal slippy) difficult to hold or to stand or move on, because it is smooth, wet or polished:
slippery like a fish * In places the path can be wet and slippery. * His hand was slippery with sweat.
2 (informal) (of a person) that you cannot trust:
Don't believe what he says-he's a slippery customer.
3 (informal) (of a situation, subject, problem, etc.) difficult to deal with and that you have to think about carefully:
Freedom is a slippery concept (= because its meaning changes according to your point of view).
IDIOMS
the / a slippery slope a course of action that is difficult to stop once it has begun, and can lead to serious problems or disaster:
She realized he was on the slippery slope towards a life of crime.
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for slippery is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is slippery a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, slippery is tagged as adjective.
Does slippery appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — slippery appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
