different between white vs thin

English

Alternative forms

• whight, whyte, whyght (obsolete)
• White (race-related)

Etymology

From Middle English whit, hwit, from Old English hw?t, from Proto-West Germanic *hw?t, from Proto-Germanic *hw?taz (whence also West Frisian wyt, Dutch wit, German weiß, Norwegian Bokmål hvit, Norwegian Nynorsk kvit), from Proto-Indo-European *?weydós, a byform of *?weytós (“bright; shine”). Compare Lithuanian švi?sti (“to gleam”), šviesa (“light”), Old Church Slavonic ????? (sv?t?, “light”), ??????? (sv?t?l?, “clear, bright”), Persian ????? (sefid), Avestan ????????????????????????? (spa?ta, “white”), Sanskrit ????? (?vetá, “white, bright”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?t, IPA^(key): /wa?t/
• (without the wine–whine merger) enPR: hw?t, IPA^(key): /?a?t/
• Rhymes: -a?t
• Homophones: wight, Wight, wite (accents with the wine-whine merger)

Adjective

white (comparative whiter or more white, superlative whitest or most white)

1. Bright and colourless; reflecting equal quantities of all frequencies of visible light.
   • c. 1878, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Holidays"

     white as the whitest lily on a stream.

   • 1381, quoted in Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, eds., Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242 (1961):

     dorr??, d?r? adj. & n. […] cook. glazed with a yellow substance; pome(s ~, sopes ~. […] 1381 Pegge Cook. Recipes page 114: For to make Soupys dorry. Nym onyons […] Nym wyn […] toste wyte bred and do yt in dischis, and god Almande mylk.

   Antonyms: black, nonwhite, unwhite

2. (sometimes capitalized) Of or relating to Caucasians, people of European descent with light-coloured skin.
3. (chiefly historical) Designated for use by Caucasians.

4. Relatively light or pale in colour.

5. Pale or pallid, as from fear, illness, etc.
6. (of a person or skin) Lacking coloration (tan) from ultraviolet light; not tanned.

   Synonyms: fair, pale

   Antonym: tanned

7. (of coffee or tea) Containing cream, milk, or creamer.

   Antonym: black

8. (board games, chess) The standard denomination of the playing pieces of a board game deemed to belong to the white set, no matter what the actual colour.

9. Pertaining to an ecclesiastical order whose adherents dress in white habits; Cistercian.
10. Honourable, fair; decent.

    • White as thy fame, and as thy honour clear.

    • 1916, Julia Frankau, Twilight

      He's a fine fellow, this Gabriel Stanton, a white man all through

    • 1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, 2010, p.12:

      ‘We've only met twice and you've been more than white to me both times.’
11. Grey, as from old age; having silvery hair; hoary.
12. (archaic) Characterized by freedom from that which disturbs, and the like; fortunate; happy; favourable.
13. (obsolete) Regarded with especial favour; favourite; darling.

    • Come forth, my white spouse.

    • c. 1626, John Ford, Tis Pity She's a Whore

      I am his white boy, and will not be gulled.

14. (politics) Pertaining to constitutional or anti-revolutionary political parties or movements.
    • 1932, Duff Cooper, Talleyrand, Folio Society, 2010, p.163:

      Aimée de Coigny had always adopted with enthusiasm the political views of her ruling lover and she had thus already held nearly every shade of opinion from red republicanism to white reaction.

15. (of tea) Made from immature leaves and shoots.
16. (typography) Not containing characters; see white space.
17. (typography) Said of a symbol or character outline, not solid, not filled with color. Compare black (“said of a character or symbol filled with color”).

    Compare two Unicode symbols: ? = "WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX"; ? = "BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX"

18. Characterised by the presence of snow.

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• Bislama: waet
• Tok Pisin: wait
• ? Japanese: ???? (howaito)
• white fella
  • ? Nyunga: wadjela
• white gin
  • ? Gamilaraay: waatyin
  • ? Ngiyambaa: wadjiin
  • ? Wiradhuri: waajin

Translations

See white/translations § Adjective.

Noun

white (countable and uncountable, plural whites)

1. The color/colour of snow or milk; the colour of light containing equal amounts of all visible wavelengths.
2. A person of European descent with light-coloured skin.
3. Any butterfly of the family Pieridae.
4. (countable and uncountable) White wine.
5. (countable) Any object or substance that is of the color white.
   1. The albumen of bird eggs (egg white).
   2. (anatomy) The sclera, white of the eye.
   3. (sports, billiards, snooker, pool) The cue ball in cue games.
   4. (slang, US) Cocaine
   5. The snow- or ice-covered "green" in snow golf.
   6. A white pigment.

      Venice white

6. (archery) The central part of the butt, which was formerly painted white; the centre of a mark at which a missile is shot.
7. The enclosed part of a letter of the alphabet, especially when handwritten.
   • 1594, Hugh Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, London, Chapter 38, p. 42,^[3]

     Also it giueth a great grace to your writing, if the whites of certeine letters bee made of one equall bignesse with the o. supposing the same were all round, as the white of the b. of the a. p. y. v. w. x. q. d. g. and s.

   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, p. 18,^[4]

     […] the a. b. d. g. o. p. q. &c. […] must be made with equal whites.

   • 1931, Margery Allingham, Police at the Funeral, Penguin, 1939, Chapter 14, p. 157,^[5]

     She copied the whole alphabet like that, as though only the inside whites of the letters registered on her mind.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

white (third-person singular simple present whites, present participle whiting, simple past and past participle whited)

1. (transitive) To make white; to whiten; to bleach.

   • whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of […] uncleanness

   • so as no fuller on earth can white them

Derived terms

• white out

See also

• leucite
• leukoma
• leukosis
• Sauvignon blanc
• Svetambara
• terra alba

Further reading

• white on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Race on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• white on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Anagrams

• withe

Middle English

Adjective

white

1. inflection of whit:
   1. weak singular
   2. strong/weak plural
2. Alternative form of whit

English

Etymology

From Middle English thinne, thünne, thenne, from Old English þynne, from Proto-West Germanic *þunn?, from Proto-Germanic *þunnuz (“thin”) – compare *þanjan? (“to stretch, spread out”) – from Proto-Indo-European *ténh?us (“thin”), from *ten- (“to stretch”).

Cognate with German dünn, Dutch dun, West Frisian tin, Icelandic þunnur, Danish tynd, Swedish tunn, Latin tenuis, Irish tanaí, Welsh tenau, Latvian tievs, Sanskrit ??? (tanú, “thin”), Persian ???? (tang, “narrow”). Doublet of tenuis. Also related to tenuous.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???n/
• Rhymes: -?n
• Homophones: tin (with th-stopping), fin (with th-fronting)

Adjective

thin (comparative thinner, superlative thinnest)

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

   • 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.

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

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. (golf) 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.

   • thin, hollow sounds, and lamentable screams

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

   a thin disguise

9. (aviation) Of a route: relatively little used.
   • 2016, Hartmut Wolf, ?Peter Forsyth, ?David Gillen, Liberalization in Aviation (page 105)

     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.
    • 1945, Jack Henry, What Price Crime? (page 92)

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

Synonyms

• (having little thickness from one surface to its opposite): narrow; see also Thesaurus:narrow
• (very narrow in all diameters): fine
• (having little body fat or flesh): reedy, skinny, slender, slim, svelte, waifish; see also Thesaurus:slender or Thesaurus:scrawny
• (of low viscosity): runny, watery; see also Thesaurus:runny
• (not close or crowded): spaced out, sparse; see also Thesaurus:diffuse
• (not numerous): scant, scarce, slight

Antonyms

• thick

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

thin (plural thins)

1. (philately) 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

Translations

Verb

thin (third-person singular simple present thins, present participle thinning, simple past and past participle thinned)

1. (transitive) To make thin or thinner.
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.

Derived terms

• thin out

Translations

Adverb

thin (comparative more thin, superlative most thin)

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

   seed sown thin

   • 1623, Francis Bacon, A Discourse of a War with Spain

     Spain is a nation thin sown of people.

Further reading

• thin in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• thin in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• thin at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Nith, hint

Middle English

Etymology 1

Determiner

thin (subjective pronoun þou)

1. Alternative form of þin (“thy”)

Pronoun

thin (subjective þou)

1. Alternative form of þin (“thine”)

Etymology 2

Adjective

thin

1. Alternative form of thinne (“thin”)

Old Dutch

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *þ?n.

Determiner

th?n

1. thy, your (singular)
2. thine, yours

Inflection

Descendants

• Middle Dutch: dijn
  • Dutch: dijn
  • Limburgish: dien

Further reading

• “th?n”, in Oudnederlands Woordenboek, 2012

Old High German

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ði?n/

Determiner

th?n

1. Alternative form of din

References

1. Joseph Wright, An Old High German Primer, Second Edition

Old Saxon

Etymology 1

From Proto-West Germanic *þ?n.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?i?n/
• (late Old Saxon) IPA^(key): [ði?n]

Determiner

th?n

1. thy, your (singular)
2. thine, yours

Declension

See also

References

1. Köbler, Gerhard, Altsächsisches Wörterbuch, (5. Auflage) 2014
2. Altsächsisches Elementarbuch by Dr. F. Holthausen

Etymology 2

See here.

Determiner

thin

1. instrumental singular masculine/neuter of th?

Welsh

Noun

thin

1. Aspirate mutation of tin.

Mutation