thin as a rail
Skeletal in build
Thin as a rail describes an extremely slender person or animal, suggesting a figure as narrow as a fence rail or railroad track.
The comparison emphasizes pronounced thinness, sometimes implying undernourishment: She was thin as a rail after her illness.
The phrase is slightly old-fashioned but still common.
- lankyTall and ungainly thin
- slenderThin and graceful
- skin and bonesExtreme thinness, no flesh
- all skin and bonesExtremely thin, unhealthily so
- bag of bonesExtremely thin person
lean · gaunt · haggard · skeletal · emaciated · bony · scrawny · skinny · spare · light as a feather · wiry · attenuated · svelte · fragile · insubstantial · beanpole · rawboned · angular
- folk sayingsproverb, adage, maxim, folk saying, old saying