slime

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   cover or stain with slime

   The toad slimed its victim.

2. 2
   noun

   Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.

   As it [the Nile] ebbs, the seedsman / Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain.

3. 3
   noun

   Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals, such as snails or slugs.

   You ſhould rub your Teeth and whole Mouth and Gums, the Pallate and Tongue, with a clean courſe cloth, rubbing off the ſlime which groweth upon them in the night.

4. 4
   noun

   A sneaky, unethical person; a slimeball.

   "What about that, you slime?".

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 Saterland Frisian Sliem, Dutch slijm, German Schleim (“mucus, slime”), Danish slim, Faroese slím (“slime”), Latin limus (“mud”), Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē, “marsh”).

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