the.com/slickness
The art of friction quietly losing an argument it never knew it was in.
means The quality of being smooth, slippery, or polished — whether literally frictionless to the touch or figuratively glib and too-clever in manner.
from From 'slick,' which traces back to Old English 'slician,' meaning to make smooth or sleek, a cousin of words across the Germanic family for things polished and gliding. The '-ness' simply turns the adjective into a quality you can possess. The smoothness came first; the suspicion that a 'slick' person is a little too smooth is a much later, distinctly human suspicion — by the 19th century in American usage, 'slick' had picked up its sly, oily double meaning.
- physics name
- Measured by the coefficient of friction, near zero is glassy
- frog secret
- Mucus lets fish slide free of waiting jaws
- ice myth
- It's slippery from a thin melted film, not pressure
- shark trick
- Skin denticles reduce drag, inspiring faster swimsuits
- social sense
- Charm so smooth it triggers instant suspicion
slip and slide — inflatable water toy that caused over 6,600 injuries annually in the us by the 1990s due to its extreme slickness
ice skating rink surfaces — olympic ice at lake placid 1980 maintained at -5.5°c for maximum glide coefficient
wd-40 lubricant — spray product formulated in 1953 specifically to reduce friction and create slickness in machinery