svelte
English
Etymology
From French svelte, from Italian svelto (“stretched out”), past participle of svellere (“to pluck out, root out”), from Vulgar Latin *exvellere, from ex + vellere (“to pluck, stretch”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
svelte (comparative svelter, superlative sveltest)
- Attractively thin; gracefully slender. [from 1810s]
- 1990, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2008, page 24,
- Psychoanalytic theory […] seemed to promise to introduce a certain becoming amplitude into discussions of what different people are like — only to turn, in its streamlined trajectory across so many institutional boundaries, into the sveltest of metatheoretical disciplines, sleeked down to such elegant operational entities as the mother, the father, the preoedipal, the oedipal, the other or Other.
- 2007 January 19, Charles Isherwood, “Welterweight Bialystock Treads Softly on Big Shtick”, in New York Times[1]:
- 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.”
- 2009, Kim Bloomer, Animals Taught Me That, page 73,
- My first priority was to help Trumps lose her pudgy look and gain a healthier, svelter size.
- 2010, M. S. Simpson, Kabuki in a G-String, page 158,
- If her dream of being naked in front of Simon were to come true – and she knew, somehow, that it would – she needed to be the sveltest version of herself that had ever existed. Fries wouldn't help peel away those pounds.
- 1990, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2008, page 24,
- 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.
- 1942, Beryl Markham, West with the Night:
Usage notes
Used mainly as a compliment, whereas words like thin, scrawny and skinny could be used in negative connotations.
Synonyms
Translations
attractively thin, slender
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refined, delicate
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Anagrams
French
Etymology
Pronunciation
Adjective
svelte (plural sveltes)
Further reading
- “svelte”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Italian
Adjective
svelte f pl
- (deprecated template usage) Feminine plural of adjective svelto.
Verb
svelte f pl
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from French
- English terms derived from French
- English terms derived from Italian
- English terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- Rhymes:English/ɛlt
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- French terms borrowed from Italian
- French terms derived from Italian
- French 1-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio links
- French lemmas
- French adjectives
- Italian non-lemma forms
- Italian adjective forms
- Italian adjective feminine forms
- Italian adjective plural forms
- Italian past participle forms