Meaning

noun partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow)

verb precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow

originFrom Middle English slete, probably from Old English *slēte, *slȳte, *slīete, from Proto-West Germanic *slautijā, from Proto-Germanic *slautijǭ (“sleet”). Walter W. Skeat, the author of Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, suggests Old Norse slydda (whence Danish slud (“mixture of rain and snow”)). The word appears to be akin to Low German Sloot (“hail”), dialectal German Schloße…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0