wispy
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of wispy
Explanation
Wispy describes something that's vague or flimsy. If your explanation of why you didn't help your mom paint the kitchen was weak and didn't help her understand your reasons, you'd call that a wispy explanation. Wispy can be used more literally to describe things that are physically not very substantial, like the delicate necklace that breaks as soon as you wear it. A person who looks weak and thin could also be described as wispy. A wisp is something flimsy, but in its original meaning, it was a handful of hay or grass — again, something very light.
Vocabulary lists containing wispy
The Lightning Thief
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List 7
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Refugee
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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:
It was the little curls I tucked behind her ears, the wispy strands that caught the sunlight, and all the ordinary moments I never imagined I’d miss.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2026
A few weeks later, a wispy tendril starts out, climbing up the wooden support.
From Salon ● May 9, 2026
Liu was older, 7 inches taller, with bleached hair and piercings, practically unrecognizable from the wispy child she’d been at U.S. nationals in 2019.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
"You can't sculpt and cast something that is..." he paused, trying to find the right word, "wispy."
From Barron's ● Feb. 7, 2026
As we sank through wispy white clouds, leafless dead trees appeared, leaning out of the water like spears.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
And for crucial stretches of the game, including during a 13-1 run that turned a deficit into an insurmountable lead, backup center Mitchell Robinson manhandled the wispier Wembanyama.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025
Loose strands, under careful edit, appeared cut and glued, creating the effect of a fuller, wispier sideburn.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2021
I’m not quite sure why, but it becomes wispier as you age.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 9, 2019
Statoil, a Norwegian oil firm, is abandoning a name given to it almost 50 years ago to become the wispier Equinor.
From Economist ● Mar. 28, 2018
I remember we were making our way up a hillside, the early morning mists thinner now and wispier than before.
From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo
This time Schonberg writes in The Times that in “any part of the dynamic range, too, from the wispiest pianissimo to the most stupendous forte, Fisher Hall came through with extraordinary clarity.”
From New York Times ● Sep. 29, 2022
This unprecedented event was fomented inside a digitally networked community in which extraordinary claims are widely accepted on the basis of the wispiest nonsense.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 8, 2021
And he disclosed only the wispiest details of his past.
From Slate ● Aug. 5, 2012
In any part of the dynamic range, too, from the wispiest pianissimo to the most stupendous forte, Fisher Hall came through with extraordinary clarity.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 9, 2011
Even the wispiest bits of data are quickly fed to the entire intelligence community and in many cases to 18,000 local and state police agencies.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
