The slicker was
good-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is, and
he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular,
admired, and never in trouble. He dressed well, was particularly neat in
appearance, and derived his name from the fact that his hair was
inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted in the middle, and
slicked back as the current of fashion dictated. The slickers of that year
had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges of their slickerhood, and
this made them so easy to recognize that Amory and Rahill never missed
one. The slicker seemed distributed through school, always a little wiser
and shrewder than his contemporaries, managing some team or other, and
keeping his cleverness carefully concealed.
From This Side of Paradise -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
[Pictured: F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, hair definitely slicked]
