The spread of ‘slather’

“Slither, slather, sliver, slaver, slabber, slobber,” chanted my husband from the armchair beside his glass of whisky, to a little tune he had composed all by himself. The occasion for this outburst was a seventh item of slip-slop vocabulary: a newspaper reference to a slice of bread “lathered in mayonnaise.” I think it might just have been a misprint for slathered.

Slather has been used for less than a century to mean “spread or splash liberally on.” The OED illustrates its fundamental meaning of “slip” with a Kipling quotation: “I hate slathering through fluff.” This is not very illuminating, since…