slip [ME] English has several words spelled slip. The one meaning ‘to lose your footing’ or ‘to move out of position or someone’s grasp’ is probably Germanic, from a root that also gave us slippery [LME]. This is the slip in slipper [LME], and in slipshod [L16th], which originally meant ‘wearing slippers or loose shoes’ and also for a mistake [L16th]. In phrases such as a slip of a girl, meaning a small, slim person, slip is the same word that means ‘a small piece of paper’ and ‘a cutting taken from a plant’. It dates from the later medieval period and probably comes from early Dutch and German slippe ‘a cut, strip’. Slip for a semi-liquid substance is Old English, while slip for a petticoat is mid 18th century from the sense of something that can be slipped on easily. The saying there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip—in other words, many things can go wrong between the start of something and its completion—dates back to the mid 16th century. A similar idea was expressed by the Roman statesman and orator Cato the Elder: ‘I have often heard that many things can come between mouth and morsel’.