thin
Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.
Adjective
- Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.
- thin plate of metal; thin paper; thin board; thin covering
- It was no mystery at all, or a mystery covered only with the thinnest and most transparent veil, that forced abortion is a common practice among Turkish women. The horrible secret as to the means and the drugs to be...
- Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin. - 1943 November – 1944 February (date...
- Very narrow in all diameters; having a cross section that is small in all directions.
- thin wire; thin string
- Typically, osteoporosis causes the amount of trabecular bone to be reduced and the bone to become thinner, while the intertrabecular space enlarges and the interconnected structure of trabecular bone is disrupted. -...
Synonyms: twiggy
- Having little body fat or flesh; slim; slender; lean; gaunt.
- thin person
- Of low viscosity or low specific gravity.
- Water is thinner than honey.
- Scarce; not close, crowded, or numerous; not filling the space.
- The trees of a forest are thin; the corn or grass is thin.
- Ferrara is very large, but extremely thin of people. - 1705, J[oseph] Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
- Describing a poorly played golf shot where the ball is struck by the bottom part of the club head. See fat, shank, toe.
- Lacking body or volume; small; feeble; not full.
- a thin, tight-lipped smile
- thin, hollow sounds, and lamentable screams - 1690, [John] Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: […], London: […] Jo. Hindmarsh, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page number):
- Slight; small; slender; flimsy; superficial; inadequate; not sufficient for a covering.
- a thin disguise
- Of a route: relatively little used.
- In short, we previously found that thin routes benefit from an increase in competition in the Spanish airline market when considering routes that were monopoly routes in 2001. - 2016, Hartmut Wolf, Peter Forsyth, David...
- Poor; scanty; without money or success.
- Like their friends the "draggers," the "hoisters" or shoplifters are having a thin time these days, […] - 1945, Jack Henry, What Price Crime?, page 92:
Origin
From Middle English thinne, thünne, thenne, from Old English þynne, from Proto-West Germanic *þunnī, from Proto-Germanic *þunnuz (“thin”) – compare *þanjaną (“to stretch, spread out”) – from Proto-Indo-European *ténh₂us (“thin”), from *ten- (“to stretch”). Cognate with German dünn, Dutch dun, West Frisian tin, Icelandic þunnur, Danish tynd, Swedish tunn, Latin tenuis, Irish tanaí, Welsh tenau, Latvian tievs, Polish cienki, Russian тонкий (tonkij), Sanskrit तनु (tanú, “thin”), Persian تنگ (tang, “narrow”). Doublet of tenuis. Also related to tenuous.
Forms
Synonyms
narrow fine reedy skinny slender slim svelte waifish scrawny runny watery spaced out sparse scant scarce slight
Antonyms
Related
Derived
gossamer-thin have a thin time of it into thin air microthin nanothin nonthin on thin ice out of thin air overthin paper-thin pencil-thin prethin quasithin rail-thin razor thin razor-thin run thin semithin skate on thin ice spread oneself thin spread oneself too thin stick-thin stretch thin superthin
Adverb
- Not thickly or closely; in a scattered state.
- seed sown thin
- Spain is a nation thin sown of people. - a. 1627 (date written), Francis [Bacon], “Considerations Touching a Warre with Spaine. […]”, in William Rawley, editor, Certaine Miscellany Works of the Right Honourable Francis...
Forms
Noun
- A loss or tearing of paper from the back of a stamp, although not sufficient to create a complete hole.
- Any food produced or served in thin slices.
- chocolate mint thins
- potato thins
- wheat thins
Forms
Verb
- To make thin or thinner.
- Exhausted fathers thinned the blood, You curse the legacy of pain; Darling of an infected brood, You feel disaster climb the vein. - 1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf,...
- To become thin or thinner.
- The crowds thinned after the procession had passed: there was nothing more to see.
- To dilute.
- To remove some plants or parts of plants in order to improve the growth of what remains.
- So floriferous are Asian pears, and the tree so laden with young fruit, that as the tree approaches maturity it is worth considering thinning the fruit (I can't quite bring myself to thin the flowers) so as to neither...