Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having little width in proportion to height or length; long and thin: a slender rod.
- adj. Thin and delicate in build; gracefully slim: "She was slender as a willow shoot is slender—and equally graceful, equally erect” ( Frank Norris).
- adj. Small in amount or extent; meager: slender wages; a slender chance of survival.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Small in width or diameter as compared with the length; slim; thin: as, a slender stem or stalk; a slender waist.
- In zoology, gracile; tenuous; attenuated: specifically noting various animals and some parts of animals.
- Weak; feeble; slight; lacking body or strength: as, a slender frame or constitution; slender hopes; slender comfort.
- Meager; small; scant; inadequate: as, slender means; slender alms.
- Moderate; inconsiderable; trivial.
- Not amply supplied.
- In phonography, the opposite of broad or open. Thus, ē and ī are slender vowels.
- Synonyms Fragile, flimsy, frail.
- Scanty, sparing, lean.
Wiktionary
- adj. Thin; slim.
- adj. palatalized
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Small or narrow in proportion to the length or the height; not thick; slim.
- adj. Weak; feeble; not strong; slight.
- adj. Moderate; trivial; inconsiderable; slight.
- adj. Small; inadequate; meager; pitiful.
- adj. Spare; abstemious; frugal.
- adj. (Phon.) Uttered with a thin tone; -- the opposite of
broad .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. small in quantity
- adj. very narrow
- adj. being of delicate or slender build
- adj. having little width in proportion to the length or height
- adj. moving and bending with ease
Etymologies
- 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 *sleidh- (“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. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English sclendre, slendre. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Miss Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving wheels.”
“Cute little girls frozen forever in slender bodies.”
“At one point Miss Drexel "seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers," throws the skirt under the wheels to give the machine's wheels purchase.”
“It's horrible that we must sometimes be reminded how slender is the thread that holds our lives together.”
“Diclofenac has lead to global population declines as high as 99 percent in slender-billed and other vulture species.”
“I was buying and enjoying these diet sodas that were packaged in slender cans.”
“The Azzurri's esteemed defense is well-known for its ability to maintain slender leads.”
“By its terms his slender fortune was placed in the hands of a trust and investment company, who were constituted the boy's guardians, and enjoined to give their ward a liberal education along such lines as he himself might choose.”
“– On many of the sugar maples the long flowers are hanging in slender green clusters, while on others they have not yet come out; and year after year we find the same difference between various individuals of the same species of maple, more marked, it would seem, among these than with other trees.”
“At his call a slender, graceful woman who was gazing in anxiety and dismay from the opposite side of the cab and pleading with the driver not to beat his horse, turned suddenly, and a pair of lovely dark eyes lighted up at sight of his face.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘slender’.
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bbc uk china vocab.
conservationists, estimate, threats, infertility, eating away at, endangered, furry, panel, in trouble, gongs, triumphed, caps and 1007 more...
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Fairylike
fairylike, enchanted, pixieish, pixyish, impish, mischievous, fluttery, magical, bewitching, enchanting, fey, otherworldly and 126 more...
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bad memory
copper, anvil, oblique, thrust, shrine, welfare, farewell, bitter, faction, sectarian, tangible, spectacle and 134 more...
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SCIE - neurology
abducens.....draw..., ablation.....carr..., acetylcholine......., adrenalin.....nea..., afferent.....to c..., agnosia.....no kn..., alar.....wing-like, alexia.....no words, alveus.....canal, amacrine.....no l..., ambidextrous........, ambiguus.....doub... and 701 more...
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I am : physical
Describing appearance and physique. More quantitative than qualitative/comparative. Can be used to sum a person up one-wordedly. (Still working on the definition of what I want in this list.)
handsome, beautiful, pretty, comely, ugly, rugged, buxom, buff, chiseled, svelte, lithe, portly and 35 more...
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Beautiful words
Self-explanatory.
plural, melancholy, mother, euphemism, plea, violin, chaos, chasm, soliloquy, air, listen, liopleurodon and 23 more...
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The Medley of Me
A jumble of words, sometimes contradictory, that add up to me. I'll probably be adding to this list for some time, because I'm a very complex individual. ;P
male, long-haired, big-eyed, writer, artist, guitarist, songsmith, talespinner, pilot, wannabe barnstormer, gypsy, cuddlesome and 209 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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The Most Beautiful Words in the Engli...
mellifluous, obscure, star-crossed, undulating, solstice, messiah, audacious, solace, twilight, wanderlust, lovelorn, byzantine and 219 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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S
saffron, sapphire, sashay, satin, seashell, seductive, sepia, serene, shadow, shimmer, silhouette, skyline and 96 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for slender.
seanahan Slender is the poetic way to say skinny. Oct 4, 2007
sonofgroucho Not a description often applied to me, I'm afraid. Oct 3, 2007