SLEET

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sleet mean? 

• SLEET (noun)
  The noun SLEET has 1 sense:

1. partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow)

  Familiarity information: SLEET used as a noun is very rare.

• SLEET (verb)
  The verb SLEET has 1 sense:

1. precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow

  Familiarity information: SLEET used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLEET (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Hypernyms ("sleet" is a kind of...):

downfall; precipitation (the falling to earth of any form of water (rain or snow or hail or sleet or mist))

Derivation:

sleet (precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow)

sleety (consisting of or of the nature of frozen or partially frozen rain)

• SLEET (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they sleet    ... he / she / it sleets   
Past simple: sleeted   
Past participle: sleeted   
-ing form: sleeting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow

Classified under:

Verbs of raining, snowing, thawing, thundering

Context example:

If the temperature rises above freezing, it will probably sleet

Hypernyms (to "sleet" is one way to...):

come down; fall; precipitate (fall from clouds)

Sentence frame:

It is ----ing

Sentence example:

It was sleeting all day long

Derivation:

sleet (partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow))

 Context examples 

Gale followed gale, with snow and sleet and rain.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

One day, Traddles (who had just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But wilder yet was the cry, and shriller still the scream, when there rose up from the shadow of those silent bulwarks the long lines of the English bowmen, and the arrows whizzed in a deadly sleet among the unprepared masses upon the pirate decks.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Came days of fog, when even Maud’s spirit drooped and there were no merry words upon her lips; days of calm, when we floated on the lonely immensity of sea, oppressed by its greatness and yet marvelling at the miracle of tiny life, for we still lived and struggled to live; days of sleet and wind and snow-squalls, when nothing could keep us warm; or days of drizzling rain, when we filled our water-breakers from the drip of the wet sail.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)