slim – English adjective declension

English adjective forms of slim

Adjective: slim

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Comparativeslimmer
Superlativeslimmest

Perifrastic

Sample Sentences

  • Movie stars are usually slim, attractive, and young.
  • I'm afraid your chances are quite slim.
  • Juries who will convict on the slimmest evidence.
  • Wolves' debatable third in the last 10 minutes, with the ball only crossing the line by the slimmest of margins if at all, ensured a cracking finale, although City would have been left aggrieved had they let the win slip. [2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC:]
  • A slimly-shod lad;
  • a slimly-made cart.

Adjectives inflected like slim

dim, mim, bum, rum, frum, grum, grim, glam, glum, clam, trim, prim, slim,

Etymology

1. Borrowing from Low German or Dutch slim (“bad, sly, clever”), from Middle Dutch slim (“bad, crooked”), from Old Dutch *slimb, from Proto-West Germanic *slimb, from Proto-Germanic *slimbaz (“oblique, crooked”). The sense development would have been "slanting, cunning" (Dutch) > "insignificant, slight" and then "thin, graceful" in English, a shift that Liberman calls an "incredible amelioration" of word meaning.
2. The pejorative sense found in Low German and Dutch is also found preserved in the archaic English noun slim (“worthless or lazy person”), also comparable to the South African use of the adjective as "crafty, sly."
3. Compare Dutch slim (“smart, clever, crafty”), Middle High German slimp (“slanting, awry”), German schlimm (“bad”), West Frisian slim (“bad, dire”). See: Dutch Adjectives 'slim', Dutch Adjectives 'slim', German Adjectives 'schlimm'.

Verbs referencing "slim"

Dutch Adjectives slim, German Adjectives schlimm.