agile
Americanadjective
-
quick and well-coordinated in movement; lithe.
an agile leap.
- Antonyms:
- awkward
-
an agile person.
-
marked by an ability to think quickly; mentally acute or aware.
She's 95 and still very agile.
-
noting or relating to a philosophy of product development and production intended to create and distribute batches of working products in a short period of time with subsequent batches planned in a cyclical schedule of improvement, production, and distribution: agile manufacturing;
agile software programming;
agile manufacturing;
agile teams.
noun
adjective
-
quick in movement; nimble
-
mentally quick or acute
Other Word Forms
- agilely adverb
- agileness noun
- agility noun
- unagile adjective
- unagilely adverb
Etymology
Origin of agile
First recorded in 1570–80; earlier agill, from Middle French agile “nimble” and Latin agilis “easily moved, moving easily,” equivalent to ag- (base of agere “to do, drive”) + -ilis -ile
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Illinois coach Brad Underwood’s ideal athlete is tall but agile, with a smooth dribble and a clean jump shot.
Underwood’s ideal athlete was tall but agile, with a smooth dribble and a clean jump shot.
Even as its major military capabilities have been all but wiped out, it has shored up its defense through the agile use of cheap drones, mines and other devices.
“We’ve got an obligation to rethink the map for our customers, to be as agile as possible.”
“AI models for generating computer code have become so efficient that we have been restructuring our product development teams into smaller, more agile and productive groups,” the company said.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.