I. ˈslivə(r), in sense 2 usually ˈslīv- noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English slivere, from sliven to slive + -ere -er
1.
a. : a long slender piece cut or torn off : splinter
a piece of apple pie with a sliver of cheese on top — F.C.Othman
was building up the fire with split logs and pine slivers — William Faulkner
b. : something that is small and narrow : fragment
the initial quarrel over the slivers of land was intense — Foreign Policy Bulletin
a sliver of an apartment in an old-fashioned small hotel — Mollie Panter-Downes
c. : a piece of bait sliced from a small fish
2.
a.
(1) : a loose soft untwisted strand or rope of textile fiber produced by a carding or combing machine and ready for drawing or roving
(2) : a similar strand of wool fiber delivered by a carding machine and ready to be spun into yarn
b. : an untwisted strand of glass fibers produced from molten glass
II. ˈslivə(r), ˈslīv- verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
transitive verb
1. obsolete : to cut off in the form of a sliver
slips of yew, slivered in the moon's eclipse — Shakespeare
2. : to cut into slivers : reduce to slivers : slice , splinter
chopped the broccoli and slivered the salad — Grace Reiten
3. : to cut slivers from (a fish)
helped … to sliver porgies for the trawls — Sarah O. Jewett
intransitive verb
: to become split into slivers
the war decided that the United States should not sliver into two, three, or four fragments — Allan Nevins