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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, particularly “slim pickings”: For fans who spent big money on tickets for major concerts or events, there were slim pickings. My comments: It means there were few tickets to go round, especially good ones. In other words, fans who did not mind paying a lot of money for courtside seats or seats close to the stage were to be disappointed. Good tickets were few and far between – hard to come by. Slim, as in slim chance, means slender and thin. Pickings literally refer to any small pieces one picks or picks up. “Slim pickings” as an expression “alludes to animals devouring a carcass”, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of Idiom, and dates back to early 1600s. Well, there are usually not a lot of meats left on a carcass after, say, the lions have had their fill. The lions, as hunters, kill a zebra, for example, and they’re going to eat first. After they’re done with their meal, the wolves or hyenas may come rushing over to have their share, to pick at and eat what’s left. Slim pickings are all that’s left, of course, scraps or small bits and pieces of meat dangling out or clinging close to the bone. Odds and ends, in other words. After the wolves or hyenas are done with it, it’s time for vultures who’ve been circling overhead all this time to swoop over and have their own feast, of sorts. Now, there really is virtually nothing left, nothing but the slimmest of slim pickings. | 
