[7] sléttan ‘smooth’: Sléttan, m. acc. sg. agreeing with the poetry-kenning based on sylg ‘drink’, is here taken as the adj. used attributively. It could otherwise be taken as predicative, hence ‘make (the poetry) smooth’, or else as the p. p. of slétta ‘to smoothe’, cf. slétta óð ‘smoothe a poem’, ESk Geisl 50/3VII. This is the earliest surviving example in the skaldic corpus of sléttr ‘smooth, smoothed’ applied to poetry, a very common metaphor in C12th and later, especially Christian, poetry.