let slip

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

let slip (third-person singular simple present lets slip, present participle letting slip, simple past and past participle let slip)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To divulge a secret, as by accident or mistake.

   He finally let slip that they plan to take over the business.

   • 1909 December 29, Jack London, “The Whale Tooth”, in South Sea Tales, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published October 1911, →OCLC, page 61:

     The frizzle-headed man-eaters were loath to leave their fleshpots so long as the harvest of human carcases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvest was too plentiful, they imposed on the missionaries by letting the word slip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue.

2. (UK, slang, obsolete) To let fly; to attack or challenge someone.
   • 1862, Thomas Hood, ‎John Clubbe, ‎Tom Hood, Works: Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse. Edited, with Notes (page 263)

     I would take it kind of your worship to let me be present at his examination, that if he clear himself of one murder I may let slip at him with the other.

Translations

to divulge a secret

• Danish: fortale sig
• Russian: проболтаться (ru) (proboltatʹsja), проговориться (ru) (progovoritʹsja)

Anagrams

• ellipts, liplets, spillet

References

• (let fly): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary (under "slip")