slim

Meaning

1. Slender, thin.
2. Slender, thin.
3. Slender, thin.
4. Slender, thin.
5. Very small, tiny.
6. Bad, of questionable quality; not strongly built, flimsy.
7. (obsolete) Sly, crafty.

slender

melt off

become thin

raw boned

subtile

become small

make thin

well-shaped

pass with no objection

subjugable

jimp

subduable

slender-bodied

not thick

slim-bodied

unfattened

not thin not fat

slab sided

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/slɪm/

Borrowing from Low German or Dutch slim (“bad, sly, clever”), from Middle Dutch slim (“bad, crooked”), from Old Dutch *slimb, from Proto-West Germanic *slimb, from Proto-Germanic *slimbaz (“oblique, crooked”). The sense development would have been "slanting, cunning" (Dutch) > "insignificant, slight" and then "thin, graceful" in English, a shift that Liberman calls an "incredible amelioration" of word meaning. The pejorative sense found in Low German and Dutch is also found preserved in the archaic English noun slim (“worthless or lazy person”), also comparable to the South African use of the adjective as "crafty, sly." Compare Dutch slim (“smart, clever, crafty”), Middle High German slimp (“slanting, awry”), German schlimm (“bad”), West Frisian slim (“bad, dire”).