Because he stopped eating junk food, his waistline became ____ and his old pants were too loose.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The chances of winning the lottery are very ____, yet many people still buy tickets every week.
Word Origin & History
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.
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."
Compare Dutch slim (“smart, clever, crafty”), Middle High German slimp (“slanting, awry”), German schlimm (“bad”), West Frisian slim (“bad, dire”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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:
"As in the West, only about 50 per cent of patients with slim fully investigated will have a putative pathogen identified."
— 2003, Charled F. Gilks, “HIV in the Developing World”, in David A. Warrell et al., editors, Oxford Textbook of Medicine, 4th edition, volume 1, →ISBN, page 446:
"Crump, having fortified himself with a bobstick of rum slim, moved cautiously among the crowds who bustled along Fleet Street."
— 2010, Maggie MacKeever, The Baroness of Bow Street: