Brewer's: Slip

Many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. Everything is uncertain till you possess it. (See Ancaeos.)

“Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra.” Horace.

To give one the slip. To steal off unperceived; to elude pursuit. A sea-phrase. In fastening a cable to a buoy, the home end is slipped through the hawse-pipe. To give the slip is to cut away the cable, so as to avoid the noise of weighing anchor.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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