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Definition of "slaty" [slat•y]

  • Composed of or resembling slate. (adjective)
  • Having the color of slate. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "slaty" in a sentence
  • "This cleavage is known as slaty cleavage, since it is most perfectly developed in fine-grained, homogeneous rocks, such as slates, which cleave to the thin, smooth-surfaced plates with which we are familiar in the slates used in roofing and for ciphering and blackboards."
  • "Like all the others I had recently examined, it was composed principally of quartz, ironstone and a kind of slaty rock; the low hills in front exhibiting the grey limestone, whilst patches of gum scrub were observable in many places."
  • "No boats are passing upstream towards Devonport dockyard and the sheltered water of the Hamoaze, but a lone heron stands on the slaty foreshore."