sliver
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A long piece cut or rent off.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sliverSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈslɪvɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment.
A small amount of something; a drop in the bucket; a shred.
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.
(Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Upper Midwestern US, Canada) Specifically, a splinter caught under the skin.
verb
transitive
To cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; to cut or rend lengthwise; to slit.
Divide into slivers or splinters
Break up into splinters or slivers
Form into slivers
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment.
Used this way, sliver is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: long piece cut or rent off
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.