slender

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See also: Slender

English

Etymology

From Middle English slendre, sclendre, from Old French esclendre (“thin, slender”), from Old Dutch slinder (“thin, lank”), from Proto-Germanic *slindraz (“sliding, slippery”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleydʰ- (“to slip”). Cognate with Bavarian Schlenderling (“that which dangles”), German schlendern (“to saunter, stroll”), Dutch slidderen, slinderen (“to wriggle, creep like a serpent”), Low German slindern (“to slide on ice”). More at slide, slither.

Pronunciation

Adjective

slender (comparative slenderer or more slender, superlative slenderest or most slender)

  1. Thin; slim.
    A rod is a long slender pole used for angling.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
      Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.
  2. (figurative) meagre; deficient
    Being a person of slender means, he was unable to afford any luxuries.
    • 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 413:
      The grounds for the conjecture are somewhat slender.
    • 2022 January 26, Barry Doe, “Fabrik offers an end to hard times”, in RAIL, number 949, page 42:
      The slender service between Ellesmere Port and Helsby has been added, too.
  3. (Gaelic languages) Palatalized.

Synonyms

Antonyms

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Anagrams

Spanish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English slender.

Adjective

slender m or f (masculine and feminine plural slenderes)

  1. (Puerto Rico) slender

Usage notes

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

Further reading

  • “slender” in Diccionario de americanismos, Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, 2010
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