thin

From Middle English thinne, thünne, thenne, from Old English þynne, from Proto-West Germanic *þunnī, from Proto-Germanic *þunnuz (“thin”) – compare *þanjaną (“to stretch, spread out”) – from Proto-Indo-European *ténh₂us (“thin”), from *ten- (“to stretch”).

Cognate with German dünn, Dutch dun, West Frisian tin, Icelandic þunnur, Danish tynd, Swedish tunn, Latin tenuis, Irish tanaí, Welsh tenau, Latvian tievs, Polish cienki, Russian тонкий (tonkij), Sanskrit तनु (tanú, “thin”), Persian تنگ (tang, “narrow”). Doublet of tenuis. Also related to tenuous.

• IPA^(key): /θɪn/
• (th-fronting) IPA^(key): /fɪn/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio:

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• Rhymes: -ɪn
• Homophone: fin (th-fronting)

thin (comparative thinner, superlative thinnest)

1. Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.

   thin plate of metal;  thin paper;  thin board;  thin covering

   • 1853, Charles MacFarlane, Kismet: or, The doom of Turkey, page 66:

     It was no mystery at all, or a mystery covered only with the thinnest and most transparent veil, that forced abortion is a common practice among Turkish women. The horrible secret as to the means and the drugs to be employed is pretty generally known, and where ignorance prevails there are "wise women," old hags, professional abortists, who go about the country relieving matrons of their burthens for a few piastres apiece […]

   • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm , London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:

     Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin.

2. Very narrow in all diameters; having a cross section that is small in all directions.

   thin wire; thin string

   • 2015 July 6, “Assessment of the Impact of Zoledronic Acid on Ovariectomized Osteoporosis Model Using Micro-CT Scanning”, in PLOS ONE‎, →DOI:

     Typically, osteoporosis causes the amount of trabecular bone to be reduced and the bone to become thinner, while the intertrabecular space enlarges and the interconnected structure of trabecular bone is disrupted.

3. Having little body fat or flesh; slim; slender; lean; gaunt.

   thin person

4. Of low viscosity or low specific gravity.

   Water is thinner than honey.

5. Scarce; not close, crowded, or numerous; not filling the space.

   The trees of a forest are thin; the corn or grass is thin.

   • 1705, J Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC:

     Ferrara is very large, but extremely thin of people.

6. (golf) Describing a poorly played golf shot where the ball is struck by the bottom part of the club head. See fat, shank, toe.
7. Lacking body or volume; small; feeble; not full.

   a thin, tight-lipped smile

   • 1690, Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: , London: Jo. Hindmarsh, , →OCLC, (please specify the page number):

     thin, hollow sounds, and lamentable screams

8. Slight; small; slender; flimsy; superficial; inadequate; not sufficient for a covering.

   a thin disguise

9. (aviation) Of a route: relatively little used.
   • 2016, Hartmut Wolf, Peter Forsyth, David Gillen, Liberalization in Aviation, page 105:

     In short, we previously found that thin routes benefit from an increase in competition in the Spanish airline market when considering routes that were monopoly routes in 2001.

10. Poor; scanty; without money or success.
    • 1945, Jack Henry, What Price Crime?, page 92:

      Like their friends the "draggers," the "hoisters" or shoplifters are having a thin time these days, […]

• (having little thickness from one surface to its opposite): narrow; see also Thesaurus:narrow
• (very narrow in all diameters): fine
• (having little body fat or flesh): reedy, skinny, slender, slim, svelte, waifish; see also Thesaurus:slender or Thesaurus:scrawny
• (of low viscosity): runny, watery; see also Thesaurus:runny
• (not close or crowded): spaced out, sparse; see also Thesaurus:diffuse
• (not numerous): scant, scarce, slight

• thick

• thinness

thin (plural thins)

1. (philately) A loss or tearing of paper from the back of a stamp, although not sufficient to create a complete hole.
2. Any food produced or served in thin slices.

   chocolate mint thins

   potato thins

   wheat thins

thin (third-person singular simple present thins, present participle thinning, simple past and past participle thinned)

1. (transitive) To make thin or thinner.
   • 1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, 1975, →ISBN, page 4:

     Exhausted fathers thinned the blood,
     You curse the legacy of pain;
     Darling of an infected brood,
     You feel disaster climb the vein.

2. (intransitive) To become thin or thinner.

   The crowds thinned after the procession had passed: there was nothing more to see.

3. To dilute.
4. To remove some plants or parts of plants in order to improve the growth of what remains.
   • 2015 September 5, Mark Diacono, “In praise of the Asian pear”, in The Daily Telegraph (Gardening)‎, archived from the original on 12 September 2015, page 3:

     So floriferous are Asian pears, and the tree so laden with young fruit, that as the tree approaches maturity it is worth considering thinning the fruit (I can't quite bring myself to thin the flowers) so as to neither overburden the tree for this year nor tire it for the next. Thinning early in the season, while the fruit is small, is ideal.

thin (comparative more thin, superlative most thin)

1. Not thickly or closely; in a scattered state.

   seed sown thin

   • a. 1627 (date written), Francis , “Considerations Touching a VVarre vvith Spaine. ”, in William Rawley, editor, Certaine Miscellany VVorks of the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount S. Alban. , London: I. Hauiland for Humphrey Robinson, , published 1629, →OCLC:

     Spain is a nation thin sown of people.

• “thin”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “thin”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “thin”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Nith, hint

thin (subjective pronoun þou)

1. Alternative form of þin (“thy”)

thin (subjective þou)

1. Alternative form of þin (“thine”)

thin

1. Alternative form of thinne (“thin”)

From Proto-West Germanic *þīn.

thīn

1. thy, your (singular)
2. thine, yours

• Middle Dutch: dijn
  • Dutch: dijn
  • Limburgish: dien

• “thīn”, in Oudnederlands Woordenboek, 2012

• IPA^(key): /ðiːn/

thīn

1. Alternative form of din

1. Joseph Wright, An Old High German Primer, Second Edition

From Proto-West Germanic *þīn.

• IPA^(key): /θiːn/
• (late Old Saxon) IPA^(key):

thīn

1. thy, your (singular)
2. thine, yours

• Köbler, Gerhard, Altsächsisches Wörterbuch (5th edition 2014)

1. Altsächsisches Elementarbuch by Dr. F. Holthausen

See here.

thin

1. instrumental singular masculine/neuter of thē

thin

1. Aspirate mutation of tin.