From Middle English slime, slyme, slim, slym, from Old English slīm, from Proto-Germanic *slīmą, from Proto-Indo-European *sley-.

• enPR: slīm, IPA: /slaɪm/

slime

1. Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.
   • c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene vii]:

     As it [the Nile] ebbs, the seedsman / Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain.

2. Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals, such as snails or slugs.
3. Synonym of flubber

   Hyponyms: butter slime, cloud slime

4. (informal, derogatory) A sneaky, unethical person; a slimeball.
   • 2005, G. E. Nordell, Backlot Requiem: A Rick Walker Mystery:

     If this guy knows who killed Robert, the right thing to do is to tell the police. If he doesn't know, really, then he's an opportunistic slime. It's still blackmail.

5. (fantasy, video games) A monster having the form of a slimy blob.
6. (figuratively, obsolete) Human flesh, seen disparagingly; mere human form.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:

     […] th'eternall Lord in fleshly slime / Enwombed was, from wretched Adams line / To purge away the guilt of sinfull crime […]

7. (obsolete) Jew's slime (bitumen).
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC ↗, Genesis 11:3 ↗:

     And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

8. (African American Vernacular English, MTE, slang) A friend; a homie.

• (any substance of a dirty nature) sludge

• French: slime
• Italian: melma, fanghiglia
• Portuguese: limo
• Russian: жи́жа
• Spanish: limo, cieno, lama, légamo

• French: glaire, bave (for a mollusc ; lit. "drool")
• German: Schleim
• Italian: poltiglia
• Portuguese: gosma, lodo, geleca
• Russian: слизь
• Spanish: baba, moco

slime (slimes, present participle sliming; simple past and past participle slimed)

1. (transitive) To coat with slime.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC ↗:

     ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’

2. (transitive, figuratively) To besmirch or disparage.
3. To carve (fish), removing the offal.
4. (intransitive, often figurative) To move like slime, like slimy things or like a slimy person.