pencil-thin

English

WOTD – 20 October 2020

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˌpɛns(ə)l ˈθɪn/
• Rhymes: -ɪn
• Hyphenation: pen‧cil-thin

Adjective

pencil-thin (not comparable)

1. Somewhat cylindrical and slender like a pencil; also, tall and thin.

   Synonym: stick-thin

   • 1962 November 15, “Which would You Design as Malleable Castings? [advertisement]”, in Mervin Roberts, editor, The Michigan Technic, volume LXXXI, number 2, Ann Arbor, Mich.: College of Engineering, University of Michigan, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 31:

     Pencil-Thin Treillage must be made of a metal that flows evenly and fully into every part of intricate molds.

   • 1982, Yaffa Eliach, “A Holy Book”, in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, published October 1988, →ISBN, part 1 (Ancestors and Faith), pages 92–92:

     She would melt the bits of paraffin and make pencil-thin candles so that she, her daughters, and daughters-in-law could kindle the Sabbath candles and welcome the Sabbath with the number of candles they were accustomed to light in the pre-Hitler days.

   • 1994, Mary Louise Roberts, “Introduction: ‘This Civilization No Longer has Sexes’”, in Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927 (Women in Culture and Society), Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 1:

     Pencil-thin, cigarette-wielding women swayed to the rhythm of jazz bands, and unprecedented quantities of wine were consumed.

   • 1997, Tali Edut, with Dyann Logwood, Ophira Edut, “HUES Magazine: The Making of a Movement”, in Leslie Heywood, Jennifer Drake, editors, Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Minnesota, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, published 2003, →ISBN, page 83:

     I learned that all the stretching, pulling, and lifting in the world couldn't make me pencil thin like the teenage models I was supposed to look like.

   • 2006, National Research Council, “Long Bean (Vigna unguiculata)”, in Lost Crops of Africa, volume II (Vegetables), Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, →ISBN, page 223:

     This special foodstuff is the pod of an unusual legume. It resembles a snap bean except for one singular fact: it is pencil-thin and as much as a meter long. Often called yardlong bean in English, these green to pale-green pods are tender, stringless, succulent, and sweet.

   • 2009, Billie Jean Isbell, “Written on My Body”, in Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, editor, Violence: Ethnographic Encounters, English edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Berg, →ISBN, page 19:

     The dancers playing the role of conquistadors wore wire fencing masks that had been painted with long pointed Spanish faces; black, pencil-thin mustaches that curled slightly at the ends; blue eyes; long, thin European noses and thin mouths.

   • 2009 November, Don Pendleton, chapter 15, in Lethal Compound (Don Pendleton’s The Executioner; #372), Don Mills, Ont.: Worldwide Library, →ISBN, page 151:

     He climbed past eroding, sandy cement and pencil-thin rusted rebar that spoke of Soviet-era cost cutting.

   • 2015, Kate Howarth, “‘Mind If I Call You Kate?’”, in Settling Day, St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, →ISBN, page 42:

     A good bit taller than Haig, she was pencil thin with her jet-black hair cropped short and a straight fringe spanning a wide forehead.

   • 2019 June 1, Oliver Wainwright, “Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the ‘pencil towers’ of New York’s super-rich”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎^[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 5 October 2020:

     Any visitor to New York over the past few years will have witnessed this curious new breed of pencil-thin tower. Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds.

Translations

somewhat cylindrical and slender like a pencil

• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: syltynn

  Nynorsk: syltynn

• Spanish: fino (es)

tall and thin

• Finnish: langanlaiha
• Spanish: cuerpo palillo m

See also

• Thesaurus:slender

Further reading

• “pencil-thin, adj.” under “pencil, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, September 2005.
• “pencil-thin, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.