English

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Etymology

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Referring to the slender petiole of a wasp.

Adjective

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wasp-waisted (comparative more wasp-waisted, superlative most wasp-waisted)

  1. Having a very slim waist, especially as a result of tightly-laced clothing.
    • 1969, Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City, HarperCollins, published 1993, page 33:
      Last week she had opened a door by mistake on a staircase in Bayswater and a woman in a tight black waspwaisted corset, pearls lolling between two great naked breasts, stood by a cage made of gold wire the size of a fourposter bed, in which were a dozen or so brilliantly fringed and tinted birds.
    • 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 11:
      He strutted down Bond Street with the best of them, decked out in in his top hat, wasp-waisted coat and silk hose.
    • 2011 October 12, Lucy Mangan, The Guardian:
      "Housewife" recalls too strongly the wasp-waisted 1950s figure outwardly thrilling to the latest advances in domestic technology while necking tranquillisers to dull the pain of frustrated ambition.
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Translations

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