English
sleet
Sleet comes from Middle English slete.
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500slete
- Englishearliest quotation 2007sleet
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500slete
- Englishearliest quotation 2007sleet
Earliest quotation: 2007, Is This Christmas?: “Though it never really snows it’s more like horizontal…”
The story
Skeat, the author of Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, suggests Old Norse slydda (whence Danish slud (‘mixture of rain and snow’)). The word appears to be akin to Low German Sloot (‘hail’), dialectal German Schloße (‘large hailstone’), Old Gutnish sloyta (‘slush, sleet’).
Linked words
through Proto-West Germanic *slautijā ‘hail, sleet’
Today it means
noun Pellets of ice made of mostly-frozen raindrops or refrozen melted snowflakes.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Middle English slete / sleet