Word.ws English Dictionary

sley

/sleɪ/

sley noun: reed (of a loom).

Noun

sley (plural sleys)

  1. Reed (of a loom).
  2. A guideway in a knitting machine.
  3. The number of warp ends per inch in the cloth.
    • An extreme draft is not desirable in the spinning of filling yarns either on a frame or mule, although yarn from the latter machines is usually spun from coarser roving than would be possible on a filling frame, and it would seem preferable to spin same from roving with a medium draft, or, from...1903 December, “The Adjustment of Cotton Preparing and Spinning Machinery”, in Textile World, volume 26, number 3, page 125
    Synonyms:
    sett

Verb

sley (third-person singular simple present sleys, present participle sleying, simple past and past participle sleyed)

  1. (transitive) To separate or part warp threads and arrange them in a reed.
    • Centering for a weaving width of 15 7/15", sley 2 ends per dent in a 15-dent reed, or centering for a width of 15 5/10", sley 3 ends per dent in a 10-dent reed.2026, Shelby Moravec, “Flight of the Dragonflies Scarf”, in Handwoven, volume XLVII, number 1, page 28
    Synonyms:
    sleid

sley meaning in Tamil and Sanskrit

sley in Tamil

சீலை

sley in Sanskrit

a sley; the reed of a loom
वेमन् véman

Synonyms of sley

Forms of sley

Noun
pluralsleys
Verb
third-person singular presentsleys
present participlesleying
past participlesleyed
pastsleyed
alternative formslay

Origin of sley

From Middle English slay, from Old English slege.

Questions about sley

What does sley mean?
Sley means reed (of a loom).
What is sley in Tamil?
Sley in Tamil is சீலை. See Sley meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sley?
Sley can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sley?
Sley is pronounced /sleɪ/.
What is the plural of sley?
The plural of sley is sleys.

Words near sley in the dictionary

  1. slewest
  2. slewing
  3. slewrate
  4. slews
  5. SLEX
  6. sley
  7. sleyed
  8. sleying
  9. sleys
  10. Slezak
  11. Slezaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sley (page history and authors); sley (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); वेमन् (Sanskrit) (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: “sley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.