Thin

How to spell thin

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce thin

What does thin mean?

1. adjectiveHaving little distance between opposite surfaces; not thick, or having little body fat.
2. verbTo make or become less dense, less crowded, or less thick.

Thin in a sentence

• adjective

  The walls were so thin that we could hear the neighbours talking.

• verb

  The gardener decided to thin the seedlings so each one had room to grow.

• adjective

  He had grown noticeably thin after months of hard training.

• verb

  You can thin the sauce with a little warm water.

Where does thin come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word descending from the Old English thynne, meaning 'narrow, slender, or lacking in thickness'. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic form thunnuz, the same ancestor that gave German dünn and Dutch dun, all carrying the sense of something slight or stretched out. Beyond Germanic, scholars connect it to a much older Indo-European root meaning 'to stretch', which also underlies the Latin tenuis 'thin' (visible in English 'tenuous') and the Latin tenere 'to hold or stretch'. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for a thousand years, shedding only the older double letters; the awkward part for writers is simply the 'th' digraph, since the sound has no single letter to match it. Because it is short and everyday, the word rarely troubles adult spellers at all.

How the word is built

• thin (single root, from Old English thynne 'narrow, slight')