to move smoothly and continuously along, as if without effort or resistance, as a flying bird, a boat, or a skater.
2.
to pass by gradual or unobservable change (often followed by along, away, by, etc.).
3.
to move quietly or stealthily or without being noticed (usually followed by in, out, along, etc.).
4.
Aeronautics.
a.
to move in the air, especially at an easy angle downward, with less engine power than for level flight, solely by the action of air currents and gravity, or by momentum already acquired.
a speech sound having the characteristics of both a consonant and a vowel, especially w in wore and y in your, and, in some analyses, r in road and l in load; semivowel.
b.
a transitional sound heard during the articulation linking two phonemically contiguous sounds, as the y-sound often heard between the i and e of quiet.
11.
a calm stretch of shallow, smoothly flowing water, as in a river.
O.E. glidan "move along smoothly and easily" (class I strong verb, past tense glad, past participle gliden), from W.Gmc. *glidan (cf. O.S. glidan, O.Fris. glida, Ger. gleiten). No known cognates outside Germanic. Glider "motorless airplane," is c.1897.