Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (intransitive) To be awkward, careless, or negligent, especially with regard to dress and neatness.
  2. (intransitive) 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)

  1. A surname.

Forms of slatter

Verb
third-person singular presentslatters
present participleslattering
past participleslattered
pastslattered
Proper noun
pluralSlatters

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

  1. Slaton
  2. Slatons
  3. slats
  4. slatt
  5. slatted
  6. slatter
  7. slattered
  8. slattering
  9. slattern
  10. slattern away
  11. slatterned away

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.

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Cite this entry: “slatter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/slatter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.