lithe
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of lithe
before 900; Middle English lith(e), Old English līthe; cognate with Old Saxon līthi, German lind “mild,” Latin lentus “slow”
Explanation
Have you ever seen people who can bend so easily, they can touch their heels to the back of their heads? Those people are, in a word, lithe. Lithe comes to us from Old English and originally meant "mild, meek." As a meek person bends to the will of others, the meaning of lithe has broadened to flexible and even graceful. Think of a dancer or the ease of a sleek cat when you think of lithe. You can use it to describe a person or the way someone moves.
Vocabulary lists containing lithe
Cat Vocabulary: A Feline Lexicon
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The Lightning Thief
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Ender's Game
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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.
See Examples For:
If you can imagine the strutting Nicolas Cage and lithe Laura Dern of David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” but with an apartment and a kid, that’s them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2026
The lithe physique of the rubber man of tennis enabled him to chase down seemingly lost causes and he combined a brutally efficient game with a rock-solid defence.
From Barron's ● Jan. 31, 2026
With the lithe, athletic body of the ballerina, she was nothing like her fellow models.
From BBC ● Dec. 28, 2025
If there’s one person who knows how to let a particularly awful year glide off her lithe, pilates-perfect back, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow.
From Salon ● Dec. 22, 2025
His daughter, writer Norah Christianson, remembers that he had “the body of a dancer, lithe and wiry and thin, everything in balance,” a physique ideally suited to the pitch and yaw of a horse’s withers.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Pappano, the longtime music director of the Royal Opera House in London, offers a lighter, lither reading, not rushed but evenly flowing, airy even when agitated.
From New York Times ● Oct. 27, 2021
Crispy-edged and light, like lither thin-crust pizzas, tortizzas can be topped with whatever you like and nothing you don’t.
From New York Times ● Sep. 10, 2021
So in the long term on Mars I think we will eventually see a lighter, lither build than on Earth.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 19, 2012
Coutured and made up to seem a younger, taller, lither Davis, Neal reads her early lines with a castrating wit, accompanied by the flinging of an eyebrow for emphasis.
From Time ● Aug. 11, 2010
Thou antic Death, which laugh'st us here to scorn, Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall 'scape mortality.
From King Henry VI, Part 1 by Shakespeare, William
I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of Swords.
From The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors... by Sala, George Augustus
The porteuses, said to be the lithest, hardiest women of the occident, wore a pitiable look of fatigue, as they came down from the hill-trails, steadying the baskets upon their heads.
From She Buildeth Her House by Comfort, William Wistar
Beyond everything he enjoyed the sight of the lithest and most elegant of the girls, whom he knew to be Eliza Brating and who was dancing with a partner whose skill obviously needed no lessons.
From Mr. Prohack by Bennett, Arnold
Were the snake himself coiled round that consecrated bauble, the prayers of the devout Father Checkley would unclasp his lithest folds.
From Rookwood by Ainsworth, William Harrison
This Gunnar was the best skilled in weapons, and the lithest of limb of all bonderfolk who have been in Iceland; the second was Gunnar of Lithend; but Steinthor of Ere was the third.
From The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald 1875 by Morris, William
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.
