slope

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To diverge from the vertical or horizontal; incline: a roof that slopes. See Synonyms at slant.
2. v. To move on a slant; ascend or descend: sloped down the trail.
3. v. To cause to slope: sloped the path down the bank.
4. n. An inclined line, surface, plane, position, or direction.
5. n. A stretch of ground forming a natural or artificial incline: ski slopes.
6. n. A deviation from the horizontal.
7. n. The amount or degree of such deviation.
8. n. Mathematics The rate at which an ordinate of a point of a line on a coordinate plane changes with respect to a change in the abscissa.
9. n. Mathematics The tangent of the angle of inclination of a line, or the slope of the tangent line for a curve or surface.
10. n. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person of East Asian birth or descent.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Inclined or inclining from a horizontal direction; forming an angle with the plane of the horizon; slanting; aslant.
2. n. An oblique direction; obliquity; slant; especially, a direction downward; as, a piece of timber having a slight slope.
3. n. A declivity or acclivity; any ground whose surface forms an angle with the plane of the horizon.
4. n. Specifically— In civil engineering, an inclined bank of earth on the sides of a cutting or an embankment. See grade, 2.
5. n. In coal-mining, an inclined passage driven in the bed of coal and open to the surface: a term rarely if ever used in metal-mines, in which shafts that are not vertical are called inclines. See shaft and incline.
6. n. In fort., the inclined surface of the interior, top, or exterior of a parapet or other portion of a work. See cut under parapet.
7. n. In mathematics, the rate of change of a scalar function of a vector, relatively to that of the variable, in the direction in which this change is a maximum.

Wiktionary

1. n. An area of ground that tends evenly upward or downward.
2. n. The degree to which a surface tends upward or downward.
3. n. mathematics The ratio of the vertical and horizontal distances between two points on a line; zero if the line is horizontal, undefined if it is vertical.
4. n. mathematics The slope of the line tangent to a curve at a given point.
5. n. The angle a roof surface makes with the horizontal, expressed as a ratio of the units of vertical rise to the units of horizontal length (sometimes referred to as run). For English units of measurement, when dimensions are given in inches, slope may be expressed as a ratio of rise to run, such as 4:12 or an an angle.
6. n. vulgar, highly offensive A person of Chinese or other East Asian descent.
7. v. To tend steadily upward or downward.
8. v. colloquial To try to move surreptitiously.
9. v. military To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An oblique direction; a line or direction including from a horizontal line or direction; also, sometimes, an inclination, as of one line or surface to another.
2. n. Any ground whose surface forms an angle with the plane of the horizon.
3. n. The part of a continent descending toward, and draining to, a particular ocean.
4. adj. Sloping.
5. adv. obsolete In a sloping manner.
6. v. To form with a slope; to give an oblique or slanting direction to; to direct obliquely; to incline; to slant
7. v. To take an oblique direction; to be at an angle with the plane of the horizon; to incline.
8. v. Slang To depart; to disappear suddenly.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the property possessed by a line or surface that departs from the horizontal
2. n. an elevated geological formation
3. v. be at an angle