A slot is a narrow opening, especially one for receiving something, such as a coin or letter. Also spelled sloth, and as a verb, to slot. American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition
Copyright 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores and online. This dictionary is a part of the American Heritage® Reference Collection and is available through our subscription service.
If you have ever played a slot machine, you may have noticed that it takes quite a while for the machine to pay out a winning combination of symbols. The reason is that the machine uses a complex piece of software known as a random number generator (RNG) to determine the outcome of each spin. Because the outcome is so random, some people might play a slot for hours and never win anything, while others may play it for just a few minutes and walk away with a jackpot!
A slot can also refer to a position in a sequence or series: We were late for our flight and missed the first plane. Luckily, we were able to get on the next one, which had an open slot.
A hole or notch in a door, window, or other surface, into which a bolt or lock fits: The windows in our old house all have slots, and the doors are all secured with locks.
An assigned time and place for a flight, authorized by an airport or air-traffic controller: We have been allocated 40 more landing slots at U.S. airports.
In a computer, an expansion slot is a place for plugging in an add-on card that provides specialized capability, such as video acceleration or disk drive control: The motherboard has two expansion slots for adding a sound card and a graphics accelerator.
A space in a computer for loading a file or program: The new program saved to a slot in the hard disk.
A place or position for a job, assignment, or activity: She has the slot as chief copy editor.