svelte

In Death on the Rocks, a 2013 mystery novel by Deryn Lake, the hero John Rawlings is described as having “svelte eyebrows” (he raises them also in 1995’s Death at the Beggar’s Opera). Lake’s oeuvre notwithstanding, svelte is not an adjective commonly applied to eyebrows, though it’s perfectly appropriate to do so—one of the word’s meanings is “sleek,” and it is often used to describe such disparate things as gowns and sports cars having clean lines. But “svelte eyebrows” also makes etymological sense; svelte came to English (by way of French) from the Italian adjective svelto, which itself comes from the verb svellere, meaning “to pluck out.” Since its debut in English in the early 19th century, however, svelte has more often been used with its original meaning to describe a person’s body—not just the tufts of hair above their eyes—as slender, graceful, or lithe.