Other forms: slims, slimming, slimmed
Slim means thin in the way people mean as a compliment — narrow in build, and healthy with it. A slim woman in a coat that fits properly; a slim phone that disappears into a back pocket.
Slim is the kind word of its family: thin is neutral, skinny is unkind, slender is close to slim but more literary. The second use has nothing to do with bodies at all — a slim chance, a slim majority, a slim hope, all meaning small and barely enough. A slim volume is a short book. There is a verb too: slim down is what a person does about their weight and what a company does to its list of staff. Watch the doubled m in slimmer, slimmest, slimming.
1adjectiveslimAttractively thin; narrow in build.
“He was tall and slim, and none of the old suits fitted him.”
synonyms: slender, trim
2adjectiveshapeThin in shape and taking up little space.
“The new laptop is remarkably slim.”
3adjectiveslightSmall and barely sufficient.
“They won by a slim margin of four votes.”
4verbbecomeTo become thinner, or to make something smaller.
“She slimmed down before the wedding and stayed that way.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: slender, thin
Slim is a borrowed insult that changed sides. Dutch slim meant bad, sly, crooked, and further back Proto-Germanic slimbaz meant "oblique, crooked". In English the meaning slid from slanting to slight and then to thin and graceful — a shift the etymologist Anatoly Liberman calls an incredible amelioration, an improvement in a word's fortunes. The old bad sense hangs on in South African English, where slim still means crafty.
Proto-Germanic
*slimbaz — oblique, crooked
Proto-West Germanic
*slimb
Old Dutch
*slimb
Middle Dutch
slim — bad, crooked
Dutch
slim — bad, sly, clever
English, today
slim
Built from
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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA