Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A long, straight, narrow cut or opening.
  • transitive verb To make a slit or slits in.
  • transitive verb To cut lengthwise into strips; split.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut asunder; cleave; split; rend; sever.
  • To cut lengthwise or into long pieces or strips: as, the gale has slit the sails into ribbons.
  • To cut or make a long fissure in; slash.
  • noun A Middle English contracted form of slideth, third person singular present indicative of slide.
  • noun A long cut or rent; a narrow opening.
  • noun A pocket.
  • noun A cleft or crack in the breast of fat cattle.
  • noun In coal-mining, a short heading connecting two other headings.
  • noun Specifically, in zoöl., anat., and embryology, a visceral cleft; one of the series of paired (right and left) openings in the front and sides of the head and neck of every vertebrate embryo, some of which or all may disappear, or some of which may persist as gill-slits or their equivalents; a branchial, pharyngeal, etc., slit.
  • noun In optics, the narrow opening through which a beam of light is admitted into the tube of a spectroscope or other optical instrument.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To cut lengthwise; to cut into long pieces or strips
  • transitive verb To cut or make a long fissure in or upon.
  • transitive verb obsolete To cut; to sever; to divide.
  • 3d. pers. sing. pres. of slide.
  • noun A long cut; a narrow opening.
  • noun (Anat.) See Gill opening, under Gill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A narrow cut or opening; a slot.
  • noun vulgar, slang The opening of the vagina.
  • noun vulgar, slang A derogatory name for a woman, usually a sexually loose woman; a prostitute.
  • verb To cut a narrow opening.
  • verb To split in two parts.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a narrow fissure
  • verb cut a slit into
  • noun a long narrow opening
  • verb make a clean cut through
  • noun a depression scratched or carved into a surface
  • noun obscene terms for female genitals

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English slitte, from slitten, to split, from Old English slītan, to cut up.]

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