death sliden.
/ˈdɛθ slʌɪd/, U.S. /ˈdɛθ ˌslaɪd/ 1. A fatal or life-threatening slide or plunge. Frequently figurative.
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1879 St. Louis (Missouri) Daily Globe-Democrat 25 Feb. 4/7 (heading) A death-slide... A shoemaker.., while drunk, lay down on a plank on a steep bank of Buffalo Bayou, and rolling in, was drowned.
1898 Arizona Republican 22 Apr. 1/5 (heading) The fatal thirteen. Another death slide on the icy Chilcoot Pass.
1958 Times 29 Apr. 6/6 A reduction from 44 to 40 hours a week would start our monetary system into a ‘death slide’.
2001 Guardian 11 June (Media section) 4/3 Magazine casualties have been happening often enough recently to evoke uncomfortable echoes of last year's deathslide.
2006 S. Carter Chocolate Dipped Death xiv. 243 The truck pulled out of its death slide, and I missed the BMW with inches to spare.
2. An act of sliding down an inclined cable or rope by means of a suspended pulley, harness, or handle, often as a recreational activity. Also: a cable or rope used for this activity; = zip wire n. at zip int. and n.1 Compounds 2. Now chiefly British.
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1908 Coshocton (Ohio) Daily Age 21 Aug. 5/4 Another death slide started... The boys have a rope stretched from the top of a tree to a log in the river. They slide down on a pulley.
1933 Times 27 Dec. 6/2 The ‘Death Slide’ is made from the top of the auditorium to the ring.
1982 People (Nexis) 28 June 46 A three-day officer assessment course.., which included a 50-foot descent on a ‘death slide’ rope.
1999 S. Wales Evening Post (Online ed.) 17 June All the wheel-chair children have been coming down the death slide.
2010 Time Out Edinb. (ed. 6) 220 There's a great play area.., complete with a climbing wall..and a ‘death’ slide.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2014; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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n.1879