sloe
pronunciation
How to pronounce sloe in British English:
UK [sləʊ]
How to pronounce sloe in American English:
US [ sloʊ]
-
- Noun:
- wild plum of northeastern United States having dark purple fruits with yellow flesh
- a thorny Eurasian bush with plumlike fruits
- small sour dark purple fruit of especially the Allegheny plum bush
Word Origin
- sloe
- sloe: [OE] Etymologically, the sloe is probably the ‘blue-black’ fruit. The word comes, along with its relatives German schlehe, Dutch slee, Swedish slå, and Danish slaa, from a prehistoric Germanic *slaikhwōn, which has been linked with Latin līvēre ‘be blue-black’ (source of English livid [17]). Another close relative is Serbo-Croat shljiva ‘plum’, whose derivative shljivovica ‘plum brandy’ has given English slivovitz [19].=> livid, slivovitz
- sloe (n.)
- fruit of the blackthorn, Old English slah (plural slan), from Proto-Germanic *slaikhwon (cognates: Middle Dutch sleeu, Dutch slee, Old High German sleha, German Schlehe), from PIE *sleie- "blue, bluish, blue-black" (see livid). The vowel has been influenced by that in the old plural form, which according to OED persisted into the 17c. Scottish slae preserves the older vowel. Sloe-eyed is attested from 1804; sloe gin first recorded 1878.
Example
- 1. Your boys elvis and sloe picked up the wrong guy .
- 2. Have we been at the sloe gin again ?
- 3. A solitary but whole sloe lay near the corpse as well .
- 4. He tell me how to sloe my heart , and I succeed .
- 5. You 'd better sloe down . Don 't dance so fast .