Wiktionary

svelte

English

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WOTD – 12 December 2013, 12 December 2014

Etymology

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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”).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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svelte (comparative svelter, superlative sveltest)

  1. Attractively thin; gracefully slender. [from 1810s]
    • 1990, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, published 2008, page 24:
      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.
    • 2007 January 19, Charles Isherwood, “Welterweight Bialystock Treads Softly on Big Shtick”, in New York Times‎[1]:
      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.”
    • 2009, Kim Bloomer, Animals Taught Me That, page 73:
      My first priority was to help Trumps lose her pudgy look and gain a healthier, svelter size.
    • 2010, M. S. Simpson, Kabuki in a G-String, page 158:
      If her dream of being naked in front of Simon were to come true – and she knew, somehow, that it would – she needed to be the sveltest version of herself that had ever existed. Fries wouldn't help peel away those pounds.
  2. Refined, delicate.
    • 1942, Beryl Markham, West with the Night:
      Peering down from the cockpit at grazing elephant, you have the feeling that what you are beholding is wonderful, but not authentic. It is not only incongruous in the sense that animals simply are not as big as trees, but also in the sense that the twentieth century, tidy and svelte with stainless steel as it is, would not possibly permit such prehistoric monsters to wander in its garden.
    • 2023 August 5, Simon Hattenstone, “Labour MP Chris Bryant on cleaning up parliament, and why he’s not afraid to pick a fight: ‘I’ve got in more scrapes than most people’”, in The Guardian‎[2]:
      At 61, Bryant looks good – smart and svelte in an electric blue suit, youthful, a full head of hair except for a white scar at the back that looks like a side door into his brain.

Usage notes

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Used mainly as a compliment, whereas words like thin, scrawny and skinny could be used in negative connotations.

Synonyms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Italian svelto.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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svelte (plural sveltes)

  1. thin; slender
    Synonyms: dégagé, élancé, mince
    Antonyms: gros, large

Descendants

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  • → English: svelte

Further reading

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Italian

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Pronunciation

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Adjective

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svelte f pl

  1. feminine plural of svelto

Participle

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svelte f pl

  1. feminine plural of svelto

References

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  1. ^ svelto in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Norwegian Nynorsk

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Etymology 1

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From Old Norse svelta, from Proto-Germanic *sweltaną. The noun is derived from the verb.

Verb

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svelte (present tense svelt, past tense svalt, supine svolte, past participle svolten, present participle sveltande, imperative svelt)

  1. (intransitive) to feel hungry
  2. (intransitive) to starve
Alternative forms
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Derived terms
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Noun

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svelte f (definite singular svelta, uncountable)

  1. hunger, starvation
  2. (card games) a two player card game wherein the goal is to "starve" the opponent of all their card

Etymology 2

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Causative of svelte (Etymology 1). From Old Norse svelta, from Proto-Germanic *swaltijaną.

Verb

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svelte (present tense svelter, past tense svelte, past participle svelt, passive infinitive sveltast, present participle sveltande, imperative svelt)

  1. (transitive) to starve (someone)
Alternative forms
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Derived terms
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References

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