''lithe'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''lithe'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

lithe - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

lithe (comparative lither, superlative lithest)

• (obsolete) Mild; calm.
  • ✤ Synonyms: clement, gentle, mellow
  • ✤ * lithe weather*
• Slim but not skinny.
  • ✤ Synonyms: lithesome, lissome, swack; see also Thesaurus: slender
  • ✤ * lithe body*
  • ✤ The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment after the lion’s death the two men were surrounded by lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering—a thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply.¹
  • ✤ She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven, burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.²
  • ✤ The coaches are grim, tan, lithe -looking women, clearly twirlers once, on the far side of their glory now and very serious-looking, each with a clipboard and whistle.³
• Capable of being easily bent; flexible.
  • ✤ Synonyms: pliant, flexible, limber; see also Thesaurus: flexible
  • ✤ the elephant’s lithe trunk.
  • ✤ … she danced with a kind of passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace …⁴
  • ✤ Doolittle and myself waited. Colebrook kept on cautiously, squirming his long body in sinuous waves like a lizard’s through the grass, and was soon lost to us. No snake could have been lither.⁵
• Adaptable.
  • ✤ Yet the 2016 Éxilé rosé from Lise et Bertrand Jousset in the Loire Valley, made mostly of gamay, was yeasty let${}^{[sic–meaningyet]}$ light and lithe, while the 2016 Indigeno from Ancarani in Emilia-Romagna, made of trebbiano, was taut and earthy.⁶

Verb

lithe (third-person singular simple present lithes, present participle lithing, simple past and past participle lithed)

• (intransitive, obsolete) To become calm.
• (transitive, obsolete) To make soft or mild; soften; alleviate; mitigate; lessen; smooth; palliate.
  • ✤ England.. hath now suppled, lithed and stretched their throats.⁷
  • ✤ Give me also faith, Lord,.. to lithe, to form, and to accommodate my spirit and members.⁸

Verb

lithe (third-person singular simple present lithes, present participle lithing, simple past and past participle lithed)

• (intransitive, obsolete) To attend; listen, hearken.
• (transitive) To listen to, hearken to.

Noun

lithe (plural lithes)

• (Scotland) Shelter.
  • ✤ So Cospatric got him the Pict folk to build a strong castle there in the lithe of the hills, with the Grampians dark and bleak behind it, and he had the Den drained and he married a Pict lady and got on her bairns and he lived there till he died.⁹

Verb

lithe (third-person singular simple present lithes, present participle lithing, simple past and past participle lithed)

• (archaic, dialect, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire) to thicken (gravy, etc.)
  • ✤ * lithe widely used as a verb in nEng Sc and Ir, as a noun only in Cu*¹⁰
  • ✤ to render lithe or thick, to thicken (broth, etc.)¹¹
  • ✤ * lithe ‘to thicken soups, sauces, etc.’*¹²
  • ✤ * lithe vt to THICKEN gravy V7.7 la:ð Y, laɪð Y Nt L, laɪð La Nt L*¹³

Pronunciation

• IPA: /laɪð/, (US also)/laɪθ/, (nonstandard)/lɪθ/(compare lissom)
• Audio (UK): 🔊
• Rhymes: -aɪð

Etymology 1

From Middle English lithe, from Old English līþe (“gentle, mild”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡linþ(ī), from Proto-Germanic ﹡linþaz, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡lentos.

Akin to Saterland Frisian lied (“thin, skinny, gaunt”), Danish, Dutch, and archaic German lind (“mild”). Some sources also list Latin lenis (“soft”) and/or Latin lentus (“supple”) as possible cognates.

Etymology 2

From Middle English lithen, from Old English līþian, līþigian, līþegian (“to soften, calm, mitigate, assuage, appease, be mild”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡linþijan, from Proto-Germanic ﹡linþijaną (“to soften”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡lento- (“bendsome, resilient”). Cognate with German lindern (“to alleviate, ease, relieve”).

Etymology 3

From Middle English lithen, from Old Norse hlýða (“to listen”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡hliuþijaną (“to listen”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡ḱlew- (“to hear”).

Cognate with Danish lytte (“to listen”). Related to Old English hlēoþor (“noise, sound, voice, song, hearing”), Old English hlūd (“loud, noisy, sounding, sonorous”). More at loud.

Etymology 4

Uncertain; perhaps an alteration of lewth.

Etymology 5

From Middle English lithen (“to make gentle or mild; to relax, soothe”), from Old English līþan (“to assuage, mitigate, soften”), from līþe (“lithe, gentle”).

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 125: ↩

2. 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 2: ↩

3. 1997, David Foster Wallace, “Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group: ↩

4. 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Elsie Venner, page 125 ↩

5. 1900, Grant Allen, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter VIII, in Hilda Wade: ↩

6. 2018 March 8, Eric Asimov, “Bubbles, With Joy: Pétillant Naturel’s Triumphant Return”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

7. a. 1652, Thomas Adams, Physic from Heaven: ↩

8. 1642, Daniel Rogers, Naaman the Syrian: His Disease and Cure: ↩

9. 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song: ↩

10. 1902, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, Oxford University Press, page 624: ↩

11. 1933, C.T. Onions, editor, The Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, page 344: ↩

12. 1994, Arnold Kellett, The English Dialect Dictionary, Smith Settle, page 105 ↩

13. 1994, Clive Upton, David Parry, J.D.A. Widdowson, Survey of English Dialects: The Dictionary and Grammar, Croom Helm: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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