Word.ws English Dictionary

slithery

slithery adjective: that slithers; that moves like a snake.

Adjective

slithery (comparative slitherier, superlative slitheriest)

  1. That slithers; that moves like a snake.
    • Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that’s how Milverton impresses me.1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes
    • […] we set out for the cannery. There, men with spiked poles would swarm into the scow, hook each fish under the gills. The creatures would hurtle through the air like silver streaks, landing into the cannery chutes with slithery thumps, and pass on to the ripping knives1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck
  2. Sneaky, underhanded; evasive.
    • The suspects include mischievous caricatures from the New York art world-a guileful art dealer, a slithery lawyer, a glittering female collector of celebrities, a vacant former model who is Maitland's widow, and so on.1977 August 29, John Show, “Stilled Life”, in Time
  3. Slippery, causing one to slither.
    • But a little while only would he suffer us to halt; then right we turned, up along the ridge, where the way was yet worse than in the dale had been, with rocks and pits hidden in the heather, and slithery slabs of granite.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 26, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC
    • She led the way, stepping gingerly on the slithery moss.1926, Edgar Wallace, chapter 29, in The Black Abbot

Forms of slithery

comparativeslitherier
superlativeslitheriest

Origin of slithery

From Middle English slidery; equivalent to and remodelled as slither + -y.

Questions about slithery

What does slithery mean?
Slithery means that slithers; that moves like a snake.
What part of speech is slithery?
Slithery is an adjective.

Words near slithery in the dictionary

  1. slithering
  2. slitherings
  3. slitherlink
  4. slithers
  5. slithersome
  6. slithery
  7. slithier
  8. slithiest
  9. slithy
  10. sliting
  11. slitlamp

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slithery (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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