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Svelte came to us, by way of French, from Italian svelto, which itself comes from the Italian verb svellere, meaning "to pluck out" or "to pull or stretch out." In English svelte has been used since the early 19th century to describe a slender appearance, as in A.B. Granville's 1838 description of a countess who was "tall, svelte, pale, and interesting." By the 20th century, English speakers had stretched the word's meaning to suggest an urbane or suave nature—as poet Ezra Pound did when he described "svelte Verona," a city he visited in north Italy.
Common Misspelling(s)
svelt
Synonyms
Examples of svelte in a Sentence
Julia Zaltzman, Robb Report, 8 Apr. 2024
Andrew Cunningham The other nice thing about the Laptop 16 design is its charger, which at 180 W could be gigantic but is actually relatively svelte thanks to newfangled gallium nitride (GaN) technology.
—Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 29 Jan. 2024
The Reds made up 21 games in the standings last summer, relying on svelte young talent in Elly De La Cruz, Matt McLain, Spencer Steer, and DH Christian Encarnacion-Strand, whose name barely fits onto the back of his uniform.
—Dan Schlossberg, Forbes, 19 Feb. 2024
And svelte cars like a Ferrari 250 GTO or Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing certainly shouldn’t be an issue.
—Michael Van Runkle, Robb Report, 26 Jan. 2024
The rapper said all that hard work has taken him from 253 pounds to his current svelte 210.
—Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 25 Jan. 2024
According to Chrome's network tracker, today, full-fat Gmail loads about 14.4MB (a lot of this gets cached for future visits), while the basic HTML version is an impossibly svelte 143KB.
—Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 26 Sep. 2023
Sleek in stature with its svelte pink body and rotating red light-emitting head, the wand is equal parts stunning and functional.
—Alyssa Brascia, Peoplemag, 9 Jan. 2024
The 54-foot Vespro was a new launch at the Cannes Yachting Festival, a sleek-looking vessel with a long profile, vertical bow, svelte hardtop and open stern.
—Kevin Koenig, Robb Report, 15 Nov. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'svelte.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near svelte
Cite this Entry
“Svelte.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/svelte. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
from French svelte "slender, sleek," from Italian svelto (same meaning), derived from svellere "to pluck out," derived from Latin evellere "to pluck"
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