A position in a group, series, sequence, etc.: He occupied the slot of chief copy editor at the Gazette for 20 years.
In machine tools, a slot is an opening cut in a workpiece to accommodate a tool. In the context of machining, a slot may also refer to a groove cut in the workpiece to guide a cutting tool during operations such as boring and milling. The guiding groove may be lubricated to help prevent chip cling and to assist the tool in advancing smoothly through the workpiece. In addition, the workpiece is often heated to soften the chips and allow them to fall away from the workpiece after each pass of the tool. Chip evacuation is an important consideration in slot machining, and methods to facilitate this include coolant/lubricant flushing, chip breakers, and compressed air.
The term slot can also be used to describe the time or place for an aircraft to take off or land as authorized by airport or air-traffic control. This allocation is commonly referred to as a “slot” or “time slot.”
In psychology, a psychologically debilitating level of gambling involvement known as Dark Flow can be experienced by players of video slots. In a study, researchers found that video slots trigger this psychological state three times as rapidly as traditional casinos.