means A thin, narrow piece of something split or cut from a larger whole.

from From Middle English 'sliveren,' to split or cleave, related to 'slive' (to cut or slice). It belongs to a family of Germanic words about splitting and cleaving — a cousin, possibly, of 'slice' and 'split' — and has always carried that sense of something cleanly broken away. The soft 'sl-' beginning echoes a whole cluster of English words for things that slip, slide, and slide apart.