thin

adj

1. Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.

   “thin plate of metal; thin paper; thin board; thin covering”

   “It was no mystery at all, or a mystery covered only with the thinnest and most transparent veil, that forced abortion is a common practice among Turkish women. The horrible secret as to the means and the drugs to be employed is pretty generally known, and where ignorance prevails there are "wise women," old hags, professional abortists, who go about the country relieving matrons of their burthens for a few piastres apiece […]”

   “Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin.”

   “The newest form of gold created in a lab is the thickness of two atoms, according to a new study. It’s only 0.47 nanometers thick, which is one million times thinner than a human finger nail. […] This makes it the thinnest unsupported gold ever created and it could be used in electronics and medical devices going forward. The gold is made up of two layers of atoms stacked on top of each other. But don’t let the thin structure fool you.”

2. Very narrow in all diameters; having a cross section that is small in all directions.

   “thin wire; thin string”

   “Typically, osteoporosis causes the amount of trabecular bone to be reduced and the bone to become thinner, while the intertrabecular space enlarges and the interconnected structure of trabecular bone is disrupted.”

3. Having little body fat or flesh; slim; slender; lean; gaunt.

   “thin person”

4. Of low viscosity or low specific gravity.

   “Water is thinner than honey.”

5. Scarce; not close, crowded, or numerous; not filling the space.

   “The trees of a forest are thin; the corn or grass is thin.”

   “Ferrara is very large, but extremely thin of people.”

6. Describing a poorly played golf shot where the ball is struck by the bottom part of the club head. See fat, shank, toe.
7. Lacking body or volume; small; feeble; not full.

   “a thin, tight-lipped smile”

   “thin, hollow sounds, and lamentable screams”

8. Slight; small; slender; flimsy; superficial; inadequate; not sufficient for a covering.

   “a thin disguise”

9. Of a route: relatively little used.

   “In short, we previously found that thin routes benefit from an increase in competition in the Spanish airline market when considering routes that were monopoly routes in 2001.”

10. Poor; scanty; without money or success.

    “Like their friends the "draggers," the "hoisters" or shoplifters are having a thin time these days, […]”

noun

1. A loss or tearing of paper from the back of a stamp, although not sufficient to create a complete hole.
2. Any food produced or served in thin slices.

   “chocolate mint thins”

   “potato thins”

   “wheat thins”

verb

1. (transitive)To make thin or thinner.

   “Exhausted fathers thinned the blood, You curse the legacy of pain; Darling of an infected brood, You feel disaster climb the vein.”

2. (intransitive)To become thin or thinner.

   “The crowds thinned after the procession had passed: there was nothing more to see.”

3. To dilute.
4. To remove some plants or parts of plants in order to improve the growth of what remains.

   “So floriferous are Asian pears, and the tree so laden with young fruit, that as the tree approaches maturity it is worth considering thinning the fruit (I can't quite bring myself to thin the flowers) so as to neither overburden the tree for this year nor tire it for the next. Thinning early in the season, while the fruit is small, is ideal.”

adv

1. Not thickly or closely; in a scattered state.

   “seed sown thin”

   “Spain is a nation thin sown of people.”