wispy
Americanadjective
-
wispier,
comparative
-
wispiest
superlative
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:
"To our surprise, it turns out you can, if you have an extremely dense screen of hydrogen, so dense that it looks more like the surface of an enormous star than a wispy interstellar nebula."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026
A few weeks later, a wispy tendril starts out, climbing up the wooden support.
From Salon ● May 9, 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
I thought Alex was pretty cute in his light maroon jacket — the kind that’s perfect for those May gray evenings and one that highlighted his wispy blond hair.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2025
Harry started combing the few strands of his wispy white hair.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
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.
