a narrow opening, as in a door or container: a coin slot in a vending machine; the slot for a phone number in an answering machine. Also called slit, slitt, or aperture. a position or spot in a group, series, sequence, etc.: He had a slot as the chief copy editor.
In sports, a position on the team’s roster: He played the slot for the Buccaneers. a small opening for receiving something, as in a mail slot or in an envelope: He put the letter into the slot. a place in a schedule or program: They reserved a room for the slot on Saturday afternoon.
A narrow notch or groove: a key slot in a door; the slot for a coin on a vending machine. Also used figuratively: a position in a group, series, or sequence: He is in the middle of the pack in his race for the slot.
In computers, a hardware device that allows information to be stored and retrieved in parallel with other processes. In very long instruction word (VLIW) computer architectures, a slot is the portion of the processor core that executes instructions, in contrast to an operand-accumulator pipeline that stores and retrieves the data for those instructions. A slot is also the name of a computer memory area that is shared among multiple execution units. Hence, VLIW machines can execute instructions faster than other types of machines that operate in a more traditional manner.