slippers

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of slipper.

   She kept a pair of sheepskin slippers beside the bed for cold mornings.

   The hotel provided complimentary slippers for every guest on arrival.

   Note

   The regular -s plural carries every meaning of the singular, and they are not all indoor shoes. In Hawaii, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and the US, slippers can mean flip-flops, the rubber sandals. Less familiar senses come along too: a child's apron or pinafore, a brake shoe for a wagon wheel, people or creatures that slip. The same spelling also serves the spanking verb, so context decides.

2. 2
   verbAustraliaNew ZealandUK

   Third-person singular simple present of slipper.

   In the novel, the housemaster slippers any boy caught out of bed after lights-out.

   Whenever her brother comes home past midnight, their father slippers him as punishment.

   Note

   Here the shoe becomes the instrument: to slipper someone is to spank them with a plimsoll as corporal punishment. The verb belongs to the UK, Australia and New Zealand. As a third-person form it wants a singular subject and an object, the one punished: the housemaster slippers a boy. Without that frame, the plural noun is the likelier reading.

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