Dictionary

slithy en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈslaɪði/
• slīʹthē
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Blend of lithe + slimy, coined by Lewis Carroll in 1871.

Meanings

1. lithe and slimy or slithery.
   • He sweeps down; a frog is pinioned / Swift arrives his faithful soul-mate / True-loves share their slithy dinner. 2013, Jane Wilson-Howarth, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows:
   • She wanted to wear these slithy, snaky gowns you see in the pictures in the hallways of the $3 photographers. 1906, Good Housekeeping, volume 43, page 130:
   • 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. 1871, Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky:
   • The squid wrapped its slithy tentacles around its prey.
   • The Beast, slithier even than the Jabberwock and certainly a deal more manxsome as a foe, grips in its claws a dreaded P45 from Piers marking the end of employment at Gussage Court. 2014, Timothy Edward, Lessons in Humiliation, page 157:
   • Falling roof, hidden shafts, slithiest snakes could not have stopped me after that. I arrived in the sparkling area. 1917, Gertrude Singleton Mathews, Treasure, page 126:
   • Such a carriage is known as “an araba,” or alternatively as an yaili—a name which is probably onomatopœic, for it is about the “slithiest” thing that runs on wheels. 1914, Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram, The Cradle of Mankind: Life in Eastern Kurdistan:

Forms

Translations (3)

fr lubricilleux (slimy and lithe) · fi limahdikas (slimy and lithe) · ru хли́вкий (slimy and lithe)

wikipedia: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There