🛩️ A small aircraft 🪶 Extremely light 🥗 Very low-calorie

ultralight

3.9

Low in calories and fat, often used for food or drink

adjective
/ˈʌltrəˌlaɪt/

: ultraligero

When choosing drinks, I often opt for ultralight options to reduce my caloric intake.

Examples

This ultralight dressing contains only 25 calories per serving, making it a healthy choice for salads.
Let's have a party where we drink some ultralight beers and a little bit of hint of chicken noodle soup water, and then we just we wash everything down with the Dookie Brown.
I prefer ultralight snacks that help me maintain my diet without sacrificing flavor.

Synonyms

light

vsultralight

33 2.4

Food or drink with fewer calories

focuses instead on very small calorie or fat amounts rather than digestibility

low-cal

vsultralight

Informal

5 3.1

Having fewer calories than usual

is broader and also refers to very low fat as well as calories

lite

vsultralight

Informal

1 3.7

Having fewer calories or less fat than the usual version

is more extreme and claims very low amounts with stronger health marketing

superlight

vsultralight

3.9

Very low in calories and fat, often sold as healthy food

is the same meaning but used as a different marketing label

fatless

vsultralight

2.5

Containing no fat

allows minimal fat rather than requiring complete absence

Antonyms

fatty

54 2.3

Containing a lot of oil, usually in food

How Light

ultralight

3.9

light

33 2.4

low-cal

Informal

5 3.1

Surface Forms

ultralight positive

ultralighter comparative

ultralightest superlative

Morphology

ultralight = light (semi-transparent) = ultra + light

The meaning is built from ultra- + light, but the food-marketing use is somewhat conventionalized.

Etymology

Ultralight is made from ultra- meaning 'beyond' or 'very' and light meaning 'not heavy' or 'low in calories'. So when ultralight describes food it means 'very low in calories or fat', which makes it easy to remember on a diet.