Slender
adj, noun, slang ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 A simple country gentleman. UK, obsolete, slang
"[…] the fantastic pilgrimages imposed on the "Cousin Slenders" of the world by their more facetious comrades […]"
- 1 Thin; slim.
"A rod is a long slender pole used for angling."
- 2 Meagre; deficient. figuratively
"Being a person of slender means, he was unable to afford any luxuries."
- 3 Palatalized.
- 1 being of delicate or slender build wordnet
- 2 small in quantity wordnet
- 3 having little width in proportion to the length or height wordnet
- 4 very narrow wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"We have only a slender chance of success."
Etymology
From Middle English slendre, sclendre, from Old French esclendre (“thin, slender”), from Middle Dutch slinder (“thin, lank”), from Proto-Germanic *slindraz (“sliding, slippery”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleydʰ- (“to slip”). Cognate with Bavarian Schlenderling (“that which dangles”), German schlendern (“to saunter, stroll”), Dutch slidderen, slinderen (“to wriggle, creep like a serpent”), Low German slindern (“to slide on ice”). More at slide, slither.
From the character of Abraham Slender in Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Related phrases
More for "slender"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.