slatter
slatter verb: to be awkward, careless, or negligent, especially with regard to dress and neatness.
Verb
slatter (third-person singular simple present slatters, present participle slattering, simple past and past participle slattered)
- To be awkward, careless, or negligent, especially with regard to dress and neatness.
- To be wasteful.
- A ſoſſe-bangle; a ſluttiſh, ſlattering, lazy VVench, a ruſtic VVord, only uſed by the Vulgar.1768, J[ohn] Ray, “[A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used.] South and East Country Words.”, in A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs: […], 4th edition, London: […] W. Otridge, […]...
Proper noun capitalized: Slatter
Slatter (plural Slatters)
- A surname.
Forms of slatter
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | slatters |
| present participle | slattering |
| past participle | slattered |
| past | slattered |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Slatters |
Origin of slatter
From English dialectal slat (“to throw or dash about”), from Middle English sclatten, skleatten (“to flap”), from Old English slǣtan (“to sic”) and/or Old Norse sletta (“to slap, dash”) + -er.
Variant of Slater.
Words formed from slatter
Questions about slatter
- What does slatter mean?
- Slatter means to be awkward, careless, or negligent, especially with regard to dress and neatness.
- What part of speech is slatter?
- Slatter can be a verb or a proper noun.
- What is the past tense of slatter?
- The past tense of slatter is slattered.
Words near slatter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: slatter (page history and authors); Slatter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “slatter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/slatter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
