svelte

English [edit]

From French svelte, from Italian svelto (“stretched out”), from Vulgar Latin exvellere: ex + vellere (“to pluck, stretch”).

svelte (comparative svelter, superlative sveltest)

Attractively thin; gracefully slender.
- 2007 January 19, Charles Isherwood, “Welterweight Bialystock Treads Softly on Big Shtick”, New York Times:
  
  Clearly the producers of “The Producers” were so little inclined to tinker with a winning formula that they chose not to excise a few lines of dialogue to accommodate the svelter physique of their new leading man, preposterous though it is that anyone in a fit of pique would deride a fellow as “once-husky.”
refined, delicate.
- 1942, Beryl Markham, West with the Night:
  
  Peering down from the cockpit at grazing elephant, you have the feeling that what you are beholding is wonderful, but not authentic. It is not only incongruous in the sense that animals simply are not as big as trees, but also in the sense that the twentieth century, tidy and svelte with stainless steel as it is, would not possibly permit such prehistoric monsters to wander in its garden.

attractively thin, slender

refined, delicate

Used mainly as a compliment, whereas words like thin, scrawny and skinny could be used in negative connotations.

svelte (masculine and feminine, plural sveltes)

svelte f