Sleet

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /sliːt/

Definitions

1. A type of weather phenomenon characterized by the combination of rain and ice particles that occur in frigid conditions
2. Precipitation that includes small, frozen droplets alongside rain, typically occurring at low temperatures
3. Precipitation that consists of a mixture of rain and partially melted snow flakes ; small rounded ice particles that fall from the sky as frozen rain

Etymology: The word "sleet" is likely a Germanic word with no clear classical ancestry, and its roots reach back to Proto-Germanic "slautijǭ." It emerged in Middle English as "slete," and the earlier Old English forms were probably "slēte" or "slȳte." Its exact origin is debated. The nineteenth-century philologist Walter Skeat proposed that English borrowed it from Scandinavia, pointing to Old Norse "slydda" and the Norwegian "sletta," both of which were words for a mixture of rain and snow. The word is also a doublet of "slut," meaning that the two words descend from the same ancestor but took separate paths into English. Their meanings diverged so sharply that the family connection is easy to miss. "Slut" once meant a slovenly or messy person, while "sleet" kept its weather sense. Related forms appear across the Germanic languages. Low German has "Sloot" for hail, and dialectal German has "Schloße" for a large hailstone, both pointing to an older sense tied to icy precipitation. Old Gutnish "sloyta" meant slush or sleet, which suggests the word has long described wet, half-frozen weather.

Synonyms: slush, ice pellets