Roiling meanings

I don’t know when roiling became a thing that stock markets do but they clearly have possession of the word now. The word seems to be an Anglo-French borrowing in the period of the Norman Conquest and is related to the word to roll.  Turbulent waters roll about or roil, and so do stock markets.  The use of the word widened a little.  Fears are roiling global markets. The turmoil that has roiled Peru. 

 So when I read ‘a key party in this scandal is roiled in its own turmoil’  my first thought was that roiled should have been embroiled. But on second thoughts I think it is just roil muddying the waters even further.

 There is no such doubt however about a slither of cake.   I thought that sliver might not be not such a common word now but Google Ngram tells me that it is alive and well. There is a lot of evidence for a sliver of cake and a sliver of cheese, and a lot of people apparently asking for just a sliver! This is good news because sliver is a word that goes all the way back to Old English to the verb slive meaning to cut off a portion. We have lost slive but at least we can keep sliver.

 So we can stand firm on this one.  A slither of cake will not be tolerated, however many instances of use there are. Stock exchanges may, however, continue to roil.