give someone the slip
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to escape or evade someone
Literally: give someone a slip
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ Well, owing to some inexplicable negligence,’— he sighed and shook his head —‘they seem to have given us the slip.’
‘ And I've no intention of allowing you to give me the slip tonight.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “give someone the slip” mean?
to escape or evade someone Literally: give someone a slip
Is “give someone the slip” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.