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slat

/slæt/noun, verb

slat is a noun meaning “A thin, narrow strip or bar of wood (lath), metal, or plastic” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-L-A-T and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of slat is slats.

What does slat mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A thin, narrow strip or bar of wood (lath), metal, or plastic.

    slats of a window blind

  2. 2

    A control surface that extends forwards and downwards from the leading edge of a wing, leaving a gap between it and the leading edge, in order to modify the airflow around the wing so as to allow flight at a higher angle of attack without stalling, lowering the aircraft's stall speed.

  3. 3

    slangA ski.

  4. 4

    A thin piece of stone; a slate.

  5. 5

    A drop (of rain or water), a splash.

verb

  1. 1

    To construct or provide with slats.

  2. 2

    To slap or strike; to beat, pummel; to hurl or throw down violently.

  3. 3

    To throw (something, especially water or liquid) down; to slam or splash (something) down.

  4. 4

    To fall; to beat (against something).

  5. 5

    UKTo split; to crack.

  6. 6

    To set on; to incite.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce slat?

  • /slæt/

Slat has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-slat.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of slat

  • slats plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • slatting participle, present
  • slatted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is slat?

Slat appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 62,894th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Slat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpalette, lamelle (thin, narrow strip), dispositif hypersustentateur, bec à fente commandé (aeronautical: moveable control surface at the…)
GermanLeiste, Streifen, Lamelle (thin, narrow strip), Vorflügel (aeronautical: moveable control surface at the…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does slat come from?

From Middle English slatte, sklatte, sklat, sclat, from Old French esclat (“piece broken or split off, shiver, splinter”), from Old French esclater (“to split, burst”), from Frankish *slaitijan (“to split, break”), from Proto-Germanic *slītaną (“to rend, split”). Doublet of slate and éclat.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).