slice
Pluralslices
Pluralslices
- 1A thin, broad piece cut from something larger.
He laid a slice of ham across the warm bread.
Each apple slice was dipped in melted caramel.
Similarpiece, chunk, portion, bit, fragment
Note
Here the slice is the piece a knife leaves behind. Its everyday work is counting foods that do not come in units: a slice of bread, of cheese, of bacon, of toast. The pattern is always a slice of plus a mass noun, and the word turns something uncountable into something you can count. Cutting and snippet are its near synonyms.
- 2
- 3To cut something with the edge of a blade drawn across it.
The surgeon sliced the tissue with a single careful stroke.
A skilled fencer can slice an apple clean in half.
Similarcut, slit, slash, incise, split
Note
Here the word describes the stroke rather than the result. To slice in this way is to draw an edge along or across something, and nothing needs to end up in pieces. A knife that slices an arm leaves a cut, not slices. Compare cutting food into pieces, where the slices themselves are the point.
- 4A wedge-shaped piece of pizza, cut from a round pie.
She folded the slice in half before taking a bite.
Two slices and a soda is his usual lunch order.
Similarpiece
Note
Pizza-counter shorthand: the word stands alone, with the pizza understood. "A slice and a Coke," as Fuhgeddaboudit! (2010) puts it, is a complete meal order. The wedge shape is part of the meaning. A slice of pizza runs from the center of a round pie to its edge, unlike the thin, even piece cut from bread or cheese.
- 5A portion or share of something.
The investors each took a slice of the deal.
After years of hard work, he finally got his slice of the fame.
Similarshare, portion, cut, piece, part
Note
A figurative portion, sized more often than counted. Owen Phillips's BBC report of 2010 credits a team with "a large slice of fortune," treating luck as something carved off and handed round. The word belongs to conversation and journalism rather than formal prose. It pairs naturally with adjectives of size, as in a large slice or a small slice, and with abstract nouns such as luck, fame or a deal.
- 6A contiguous section of an array, made up of elements that sit next to one another.
The function returns a slice of the array containing the first ten elements.
He extracted a slice spanning indices three through seven.
Similarsubarray, segment, range
Note
A programmer's slice is a run of neighboring elements from an array, marked by a start and an end index, such as elements three through seven or the first ten. A slice often refers to the original data rather than copying it. As a result, changing the slice can change the array, which is worth remembering when the word turns up in documentation.
- 7To hit the ball so that it curves to the right, for a right-handed player.
She sliced her tee shot badly on the final hole.
A tense grip will make you slice the ball.
Oppositehook
Note
The verb behind the golfer's unwanted curve, and grammatically flexible. A player slices the ball or slices a tee shot, but the shot itself can also be said to slice, as when a drive slices away into the rough. A tense grip is a common cause, and a sliced shot on the final hole is a familiar golfing complaint.
- 8A golf shot that, for a right-handed player, curves unintentionally to the right.
Her slice drifted well right of the green.
He fought a persistent slice all season.
Oppositehook
Note
Golf sorts its curving shots by intent as well as direction. A slice bends right for a right-hander and is always a mistake, while a fade bends the same way on purpose. Hook and draw are the matching pair that curve the other way. Golfers also call a bad one a banana ball or banana slice, after the bent path it traces through the air.
- 9A heavy, tray-baked cake or dessert cut into squarish pieces.
The bakery's caramel slice sold out before noon.
He grabbed a slice with his afternoon cup of tea.
Note
A tray-bake in Australia, New Zealand and Britain: the mixture is baked in one shallow tin and cut into squares, and each square is a slice. The name usually takes a flavor in front, as in caramel slice or lemon slice. Do not confuse it with a slice of cake, which is a piece cut from a single larger cake.
- 10A baked snack made of pastry enclosing a savory filling.
The bakery's bacon slice was still warm from the oven.
He grabbed a slice and a coffee before the train.
Note
Britain uses the word for two different baked goods. One is this savory one, pastry wrapped around a filling such as ham and cheese, bought at a bakery counter or a service station. The other is the sweet tray-baked dessert. The word in front usually settles which is meant: a ham and cheese slice is lunch, and a caramel slice is something sweet with tea.
- 11A cross-sectional image of an internal organ produced by MRI, CT, or x-ray.
The radiologist scrolled through every slice of the CT scan.
Each slice revealed a thin layer of the patient's abdomen.
Similarsection, cross-section
Note
Imaging borrows the cook's word for good reason: each slice shows the body as if cut through along one thin plane. A CT, MRI or x-ray study produces many of them, and radiologists scroll through the stack in order. Stacked together, successive slices build up a three-dimensional picture of the organ.
- 12Something that is thin and broad in form.
A flat slice of slate served as a serving board.
He balanced the food on a broad slice of bark.
Note
The shape sense the others are cut from: Middle English sclise, from Old French esclice, "a piece split off", and behind that a Germanic verb meaning "to split." Nothing need actually be cut here, because anything thin and broad qualifies. Stevenson stretches it to a view in Treasure Island, where his narrator commands "a slice of the interior of the cabin," meaning a narrow band of what lies beyond.
- 13To hit the ball with a stroke that puts spin on it, making it swerve or stay low after the bounce.
He sliced his return to disrupt her rhythm.
She can slice the ball so it barely rises off the court.
Note
Tennis is where the slice turns from a fault into a weapon. The stroke puts spin on the ball so that it swerves or skids low after the bounce. Players use it to break an opponent's rhythm rather than to win on pace. Unlike the golfer's unwanted curve, a sliced return in tennis is fully intended.
- 14To mis-kick a ball so that it veers off the intended line, angling too sharply or rising too high.
The striker sliced his shot well wide of the far post.
If you slice the ball, it curves off in the wrong direction.
Note
On the soccer field the word always reports a miss. A sliced kick leaves the boot at the wrong angle or climbs too high, and match reports pair it with wide. In Sam Sheringham's BBC Sport account of 2011, Chris Brunt "sliced the spot-kick well wide." It names a striker's error, never a technique anyone practices.
- 15To strike the shuttlecock with the racket at an angle, making it travel sideways and downward.
He sliced the shuttlecock sharply, sending it tumbling sideways across the court.
Skilled players slice the shuttle to disguise the direction of their shots.
Note
Badminton's slice is a stroke of disguise. The racket meets the shuttlecock at an angle instead of squarely, so the shuttle travels sideways as well as down. Players use it to hide where the shot is going. Grammatically it is plainly transitive: you slice the shuttle, or slice a particular shot.
- 16A type of cut shot in cricket in which the bat meets the ball at an obtuse angle to the batter.
The batsman's slice flew between the slips for a boundary.
A well-timed slice can find the gap behind point.
Note
Cricket's slice is a variety of cut shot. What sets it apart is the open, obtuse angle between bat and batter. That angle steers the ball away square or behind on the off side instead of driving it straight. A batter plays it on purpose, often to find a gap among the fielders behind point.
- 17A knife with a thin, broad blade for lifting and serving fish; also a flat spatula for spreading paint, ink, or similar substances.
The cook turned the poached salmon with a broad-bladed slice.
The painter smoothed the thick paint across the board with a slice.
Similarspatula
Note
A tool named for its shape rather than its action. The blade of a fish slice is thin and broad enough to slide under a cooked fillet and lift it, and the same flat blade can spread paint or ink. It is one of several flat, broad implements the word names, alongside the serving tray and the iron fire shovel.
- 18In rowing, to angle the oar blade so that it enters the water too deeply at the beginning of a stroke.
Beginners often slice the blade and bury it too far below the surface.
He sliced the oar on the catch and nearly lost his balance.
Note
A rower's fault at the catch, the moment the blade first goes in. When the blade enters at the wrong angle, it knifes too deep and the stroke loses its drive. Beginners are the usual culprits. In the coaching idiom you slice the blade or slice the oar, and the error can cost a rower their balance.
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- 22A flat iron plate with a handle, shaped like a chisel or spade, used for stripping planking from ships, cutting blubber from whales, or stirring a coal fire.
The shipwright pried the old planks loose with a heavy slice.
He drove the slice beneath the whale's skin to peel away the blubber.
Note
A working iron of shipyards, whaling and the boiler room, known also as a slice bar, a peel or a fire shovel. The name slice bar is the one to remember. This implement is behind the verb for clearing a furnace, so a stoker who slices the fire is working the grate with this tool.
- 23One of the wedges used to lift the cradle and ship clear of the building blocks in preparation for launching.
The yard crew drove a slice under the cradle to raise the ship for launch.
As each slice took the weight, the hull rose slowly off its keel blocks.
Similarwedge
- 24In knot theory, describing a knot that bounds a smoothly embedded disk in the four-dimensional ball.
Every slice knot bounds a disk in the four-dimensional ball.
Determining whether a given knot is slice remains a deep problem in topology.
Note
A yes-or-no property in knot theory, so it has no comparative: a knot either is slice or is not. It works before a noun (a slice knot) and after a verb (the knot is slice). Topologists distinguish smoothly slice knots from topologically slice ones, whose disk need only be continuous and locally flat. Careful writing says which is meant.
- 25In printing, a removable sliding bottom fitted to a galley, the tray that holds set type.
The compositor slid the slice free, easing the type onto the stone.
Each galley had a slice that slipped out from one end.
Note
A letterpress compositor's term. The galley is the shallow tray that holds type once it has been set, and the slice is its false bottom. When the slice is drawn out, a block of type can pass to the imposing stone without the lines being lifted or disturbed. Like a fish slice, it works by sliding flat beneath what it carries.
- 26In falconry, the droppings of a hawk or falcon expelled at a sideways angle rather than straight down.
A long slice streaked the mews wall behind the perched goshawk.
The keeper could tell the bird was healthy from the clean slice on the floor.
Note
Falconers have their own vocabulary for what a bird leaves behind. The general word is mute. A slice is a mute that shoots out at an angle instead of dropping straight down, leaving a streak on the mews wall or floor. The distinction is practical, because a keeper reads a bird's condition from its droppings.
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Origin
From Middle English sclise, from Old French esclice ('a piece split off'), formed from the verb esclicer ('to splinter, split up'). This traces back through Frankish *slitjan ('to split up') and Proto-Germanic roots meaning 'to split, tear apart', ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to rend, injure, crumble'.