"Slender" plus the feminine ending "ella". (1) A brand name for various products: a line of slimming lingerie for the overweight, a line of diet foods and a chain of reducing spas. (2)A slim woman, especially one of the anorexic fashion model type.
Used in the second sense in the early sixties by Tom Wolfe in the essay "The Secret Vice", which referred to one of a certain a yuppie lawyer's many girlfriends as "one of those scientific slenderellas he always has hanging around ..."
by JerseyJohn April 19, 2006