What Is a Slot?

A narrow opening; a groove, notch, or slit, especially one in which something may be inserted. He slid the coin into the slot.

An assigned place or position, as in a schedule or sequence. I have been assigned the slot of chief copy editor.

Sports A space between the ends or tackles on an ice hockey rink. I missed my shift last week, so I have to fill in a slot this week.

A device that accepts paper money or tokens and then pays out coins, depending on the outcome of a game. Slot machines are a major source of gambling revenue in many countries, and they are widely considered to be addictive.

In the U.S., most states regulate the use of slot machines. Some have laws requiring them to be located in casinos or other establishments, while others limit the number of slots and the amount of money that can be won by a person in a given period of time. Some states also require that a certain percentage of money be paid back to the state after a fixed amount of time.

An area in which a piece of wood or metal is bent to fit a part, especially in order to secure it. A slot can be made by hand or with a machine tool. The term is also used for a gap or opening in an airplane wing, to allow airflow over the fuselage and to reduce drag.

Usually a button or link on the screen that takes you to a page where you can read the rules of a particular slot machine, and it’s essential to review this before playing. This page should contain information about all the symbols on the reels, as well as any special or bonus symbols. You should also find the payout table, which shows all of the possible ways to win.

In BigQuery, a reservation with ML_EXTERNAL assignment type does not use the slots reserved for its Query jobs and cannot share the idle slots of those jobs. However, you can change this by enabling the ignore_idle_slots option.

A slot is a virtual CPU resource that BigQuery allocates to execute SQL queries. It is an integral part of the query processing model and can be either dedicated or autoscaled. In addition, you can specify a minimum number of slots that you want to keep dedicated.

A slot is an elongated depression in the surface of a wooded board, usually in the shape of a rectangle or oval. It can also be an aperture, hole, or slit, as in a door, window, or box. It can also refer to an acoustic or electrical conductor, or to a specific job or position. For example, you might hear someone say, “The guitar player really stepped up to the plate in that performance.” See also: hole, slit, and notch.