Borrowed from Middle Low German slim or from Middle Dutch slim (“twisted, crooked; bad, evil”); compare also German schlimm (“bad, evil; (col.) sick”). First attested in the 17th century, mostly with meanings such as “bad”, “useless”, “inappropriate”, “evil”, or “wild”, or more rarely “sick”. This last meaning “sick” was apparently more frequent in Southern Kurzeme dialects; in Vidzeme, this meaning was not attested still in the 18th century. It became more frequent in written Latvian with the works of G. F. Stenders in the late 18th century, especially his dictionary, in which German krank was translated as slims, and in which slims was no longer translated as “bad,” “useless”. Stenders also coined the terms slimība, slimnieks, apslimt and slimēties (but curiously not slimot, which appeared only in the 19th century).