Sleech

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Soft, slimy mud or ooze, especially the wet sediment found along the bed of a river or estuary
2. A thick, sticky layer of mire or sludge that collects on the bottom of shallow water and clings to whatever touches it
3. Wet, clinging slime or mud, the kind that lies in shallow pools and riverbanks in northern and Scottish dialect

Etymology: "Sleech" is a noun for wet, slimy mud, and it has a close relative in English that most readers would not connect with it. Its ancestor was the Old English word "sliċ", meaning mud or sludge, which goes back to a Proto-Germanic root "slikiz" meaning mud or slush. That root traces further to a prehistoric Indo-European base meaning "to slide" or "be slippery," so the word's core idea is the slipperiness of wet ground underfoot. Over the centuries the word has changed form, passing through Middle English as "sliche," a variant of "slicche." Its sibling words include "slitch" and "sludge," which are doublets: all three descend from the same ancient source but reached modern English along separate routes, so they ended up with different spellings and slightly different shades of meaning.

Synonyms: slime, sludge, ooze, mud