Definition of "slippery slope" []

• A tricky precarious situation, especially one that leads gradually but inexorably to disaster: "[Without] a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being ... we approach a slippery slope that ends in the disposal of inconvenient people” ( Steven Pinker). (noun)

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.

• "A recent study comparing thirty-four heroin addicts in a treatment program with fifty-nine non-drug-using controls found that addicts were significantly higher on our scales of present hedonism and fatalism, and significantly lower in future orientation.18 But how can time perspective end up oiling the slippery slope to drug addiction?"
• "Herman Melville in his 1876 Clarel: “The steeds withstand the slippery slope / While yet their outflung fore-feet grope.”"
• "Young Earth Creationists argue that accepting anything other than acts of special divine creation during the six twenty-four-hour days of Genesis 1 would put the believer on a slippery slope toward a counterfeit faith."