Verb

(en verb)

To make less; to diminish; to reduce.

* Calamy

Charity shall lessen his punishment.

* Atterbury

St. Paul chose to magnify his office when ill men conspired to lessen it.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 16 , author=Denis Campbell , title=Hospital staff 'lack skills to cope with dementia patients' , work=Guardian citation , page= , passage=Many hospitals have not taken simple steps to lessen the distress and confusion which dementia sufferers' often feel on being somewhere so unfamiliar – such as making signs large and easy to read, using colour schemes to help patients find their way around unfamiliar wards and not putting family mementoes such as photographs nearby.}}

To become less.

Verb

(ergative) To (cause to) move in continuous contact with a surface

He slid the boat across the grass.

The safe slid slowly.

Snow slides down the side of a mountain.

To move on a low-friction surface.

The car slid on the ice.

* (rfdate), Waller:

They bathe in summer, and in winter slide .

(baseball) To drop down and skid into a base.

Jones slid into second.

To lose one’s balance on a slippery surface.

He slid while going around the corner.

To pass or put imperceptibly; to slip.

to slide in a word to vary the sense of a question

(obsolete) To pass inadvertently.

* Bible, Eccles. xxviii. 26

Beware thou slide not by it.

To pass along smoothly or unobservedly; to move gently onward without friction or hindrance.

A ship or boat slides through the water.

* (rfdate), Dryden:

Ages shall slide away without perceiving.

* (rfdate), Alexander Pope:

Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole.

(music) To pass from one note to another with no perceptible cessation of sound.

To pass out of one's thought as not being of any consequence.

* (rfdate), Chaucer:

With good hope let he sorrow slide .

* (rfdate), Philip Sidney:

With a calm carelessness letting everything slide .