Literary notes about Slippery (AI summary)
The word "slippery" in literature serves a dual function, evoking both the literal and metaphorical. Physically, it describes hazardous, slick surfaces—ranging from treacherous natural terrains like icy banks and craggy rocks ([1], [2], [3]) to man-made environments such as wet pavements and slick stairways ([4], [5]). Metaphorically, "slippery" conjures images of evasiveness and deceit, characterizing individuals or situations as elusive, untrustworthy, or morally unstable ([6], [7], [8]). This rich versatility allows authors across genres and eras to simultaneously convey tangible dangers and abstract themes of uncertainty and betrayal.
- Frome scrambled up the slippery steps of the porch, digging a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot.
— from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - They climbed down a slippery bank of pine-needles.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and the others had narrow escapes.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden - I was then conducted down stairs into the wet, slippery court, and the first things that attracted my attention were my heels.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - This is you, who have been as slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose?
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - The witty Plautus names a cook in one of his comedies “Congrio,” because the fellow was “slippery.”
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius - The word means literally the state or quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its derived sense of "instability."
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
