jimp
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- adjective Neat; elegant; slender.
- adjective Short; scanty.
- adjective Barely; scarcely.
- verb To jag; indent; denticulate.
Examples
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There was no sign of Lachesis and Clotho, but Atropos was writing at the table, and Annette was on hand, stony-eyed but mighty jimp in a gown that seemed to consist of flowers and gauze.
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From this it may be inferred that the "Lass of Lochroyan" did not owe her "middle jimp" to any very deadly artificial means of compression.
Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 of Popular Literature and Science
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Do I look so terrible old, Gilian, that you cannot think of me as not so bad-looking either, with a bonny eye, they said, and a jimp waist, and a foot like the honey-bee?
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In other words, although Laura was both practical and hard-headed, and although she was brisk, jimp and daring in all that she undertook, she was also the prey of an inherited belief in the legends, spectres and bogies of a Highland ancestry.
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She sat her mount superbly; as jimp and erect as a willow sapling.
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They made a picture taking enough to have satisfied a jaded connoisseur of beauty: the fair tall Highland lass, jimp as a willow wand, with the long-lashed blue eyes that looked out so shyly and yet so frankly on those she liked, and the merry brown-eyed English girl so ready of saucy tongue, so worldly wise and yet so innocent of heart.
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Presently two handsome girls, with jimp raiment and fearless demeanour, came in and took possession of an adjacent table.
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They were but three, and as they drew nigh it could be seen that they were hooded and cloaked despite the warm night; and one was tall and seemed a stalwarth man, and another was jimp and went daintily, as if it were a young woman, and the third, who forsooth had her face but little hidden, seemed a carline of some three score years and ten.
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The villagers who remembered her said that at times she _swelled_ as if she was about to be confined, and at other times was as _jimp_ as a young girl.
Folk Lore Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century
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The raising the statute labour of Roxburgh to an oppressive extent, to make roads in England, is, I think, jimp legal, and will be much complained of by the poorer heritors.
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford
Note
The origin of the word 'jimp' is obscure.
