A narrow, elongated depression, groove, notch, or opening, especially one for receiving or admitting something, as a coin or a letter. The program received a new time slot on the broadcasting schedule. A position or job in a company, office, etc., especially the chief copy editor’s slot.
The term slot first appeared in print around 1909. Its earliest known use was to describe the mechanical slot machines that Fey’s rivals operated in saloons and other establishments. These were controlled by a lever that caused the reels to spin. They were a favorite of gamblers, but they attracted the attention of moralists and clergy who objected to their operation. San Francisco banned them in 1909.
Slot is also used to refer to the number of positions or stops on a multiple-reel slot machine, where symbols are randomly selected for payouts. The earliest slots had only five stops, but as technology improved the machine could be programmed with more than 22 stop patterns, allowing much larger jackpot sizes and greater chances of winning.
The word slot can also refer to the position within a slot in a schedule or program, a period of time allocated for an activity, or a specific location on a map. A slot is also a position in a line-up, or in a series of karaoke songs. The expression “singing in the slot” means singing near the end of the list. In computer programming, a v-slot directive lets the slot contents access props passed to it by a child component.