Slippery vs Wey - What's the difference?
slippery | wey |
Of a surface, having low friction, often due to being covered in a non-viscous liquid, and therefore hard to grip, hard to stand on without falling, etc.
(figuratively, by extension) Evasive; difficult to pin down.
(obsolete) Liable to slip; not standing firm.
* 1602 , , III. iii. 84:
unstable; changeable; inconstant
* Denham
(obsolete) wanton; unchaste; loose in morals
* 1610 , , I. ii. 273:
An old English measure of weight containing 224 pounds; equivalent to 2 hundredweight.
* c. 1376 , William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman , Version B, Passus 5, Line 91:
* 1843 , The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge p. 202:
* 1882 , James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England , Volume 4, p. 208:
* (rfdate): A wey is 6 tods, or 182 pounds, of wool; a load, or five quarters, of wheat, 40 bushels of salt, each weighing 56 pounds; 32 cloves of cheese, each weighing seven pounds; 48 bushels of oats and barley; and from two cwt. to three cwt. of butter. — Simmonds.
As an adjective slippery
is of a surface, having low friction, often due to being covered in a non-viscous liquid, and therefore hard to grip, hard to stand on without falling, etc.As a proper noun wey is
an english river which flows through guildford, and is a tributary of the thames.slippery
English
Adjective
(er)- Oily substances render things slippery .
- a slippery person
- a slippery promise
- Which when they fall, as being slippery' standers, / The love that leaned on them, as ' slippery too, / Do one pluck down another, and together / Die in the fall.
- The slippery state of kings.
- My wife is slippery ? If thou wilt confess –
Derived terms
* slippery as an eel * slippery elm * slippery nipple * slippery slopeSynonyms
* (of a surface) greasy, slick, slimy, slippy, wetAntonyms
* (of a surface) stickywey
English
Noun
(en noun)- Than though I hadde this wouke ywonne a weye of Essex cheese.
- Seven pounds make a clove, 2 cloves a stone, 2 stone a tod, 6 1/2 tods a wey, 2 weys a sack, 12 sacks a last. [...] It is to be observed here that a sack is 13 tods, and a tod 28 pounds, so that the sack is 364 pounds.
- Cheese and salt are purchased by the wey of two hundredweight, or by the stone of fourteen pounds.