/slɜːp/, /slɝp/
OriginFrom Middle Dutch slurpen, slorpen (“to sip, slurp”), from Old Dutch *slurpan, from Proto-West Germanic *slurp- (“to sip, slurp”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *srebʰ-, *srobʰ- (“to sip, slurp, gulp”). Cognate with West Frisian sloarpe, sloarpje, slurvje (“to slurp”), German schlürfen (“to sip, slurp”), Swedish slurpa (“to slurp”), Norwegian slurpe (“to slurp”). Compare also Saterland Frisian slubberje (“to slurp”), German Low German slubbern (“to slurp”), Middle High German sluppern (“to slurp”), Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic slupra (“to slurp”), Middle High German sürfeln, sürpfeln (“to sip, slurp”), Latin sorbeō (“to suck up, imbibe, absorb”). Often treated as onomatopoeic in modern writing.
- transitiveTo eat or drink noisily.
“They sat in the kitchen slurping their spaghetti.”
“As the crowd cackles and caws, a white-backed vulture snakes its head deep into the wildebeest’s eye socket and hurriedly slurps, with grooved tongue, whatever it can before being ripped from its plac”
- intransitiveTo make a loud sucking noise.
“The mud slurped under our shoes.”
- A loud sucking noise, especially one made in eating or drinking.
- A mouthful of liquid sucked up.
“I took another slurp of my soup.”
Formsslurps(present, singular, third-person) · slurping(participle, present) · slurped(participle, past) · slurped(past) · shlurp(alternative) · slorp(alternative) · slurps(plural)