overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sliver.

A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈslɪvə/Australia, Received-Pronunciation/ˈslɪvɚ/US/ˈsləvə/New-Zealand/ˈslɪvəɾ/Scotland
  1. A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment.

  2. A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment. Specifically, a splinter caught under the skin.

    Canada · Essex · Kent
  3. A strand, or slender roll, of cotton or other fiber in a loose, untwisted state, produced by a carding machine and ready for the roving or slubbing which precedes spinning.

  4. Bait made of pieces of small fish.

  5. A narrow high-rise apartment building.

    New-York · US
  6. A small amount of something; a drop in the bucket; a shred.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English slivere, sliver from Middle English sliven (“to cut, cleave, split”), from Old English slīfan (as in tōslīfan (“to split, split up”)).

verb/ˈslɪvə/Australia, Received-Pronunciation/ˈslɪvɚ/US/ˈsləvə/New-Zealand/ˈslɪvəɾ/Scotland
  1. To cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; to cut or rend lengthwise; to slit.

    transitive
    to sliver wood
Where this word comes from

From Middle English slivere, sliver from Middle English sliven (“to cut, cleave, split”), from Old English slīfan (as in tōslīfan (“to split, split up”)).

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

sliver has 6 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

sliver studiosliver workshello, sliver

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

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.