slick.
Slippery or smooth due to a covering of liquid; often used to describe appearances.
Meaning & usage
Slippery or smooth due to a covering of liquid; often used to describe appearances.
This rain is making the roads slick.
The top coating of lacquer gives this finish a slick look.
Sleek; smooth.
Appearing expensive or sophisticated.
They read all kinds of slick magazines.
Superficially convincing but actually untrustworthy.
That new sales rep is slick. Be sure to read the fine print before you buy anything.
Clever, making an apparently hard task look easy.
Our new process for extracting needles from haystacks is extremely slick.
That was a slick move, locking your keys in the car.
Extraordinarily great or special.
That is one slick bicycle: it has all sorts of features!
Where this word comes from
From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English slīc (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic *slīkaz (“sleek, smooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyg-, *sleyǵ- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).
A covering of liquid, particularly oil.
Careful in turn three — there's an oil slick on the road.
The oil slick has now spread to cover the entire bay, critically endangering the sea life.
A rapidly-expanding ring of dark water, resembling an oil slick, around the site of a large underwater explosion at shallow depth, marking the progress through the water of the shock wave generated by the explosion.
Someone who is clever and untrustworthy.
A tool used to make something smooth or even.
A tire with a smooth surface instead of a tread pattern, often used in auto racing.
You'll go much faster if you put on slicks.
A helicopter.
A camera-ready image to be used by a printer. The "slick" is photographed to produce a negative image which is then used to burn a positive offset plate or other printing device.
The project was delayed because the slick had not been delivered to the printer.
A glossy magazine.
A wide paring chisel used in joinery.
In omegaverse fiction, the copious, lubricating bodily fluid produced by an omega in heat.
A silver coin that has been worn to the point its surface feels smooth to the touch.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English slīc (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic *slīkaz (“sleek, smooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyg-, *sleyǵ- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).
To make slick.
The surface had been slicked.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English slīc (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic *slīkaz (“sleek, smooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyg-, *sleyǵ- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).
Alternative form of sleek (“with ease and dexterity”).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English slīc (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic *slīkaz (“sleek, smooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyg-, *sleyǵ- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).
Alternative form of schlich.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.