svelte

Definition

Attractively thin; gracefully slender.

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”).

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "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.”"
• "My first priority was to help Trumps lose her pudgy look and gain a healthier, svelter size."