This week’s theme
Words to describe people

This week’s words
stolid
ascetic
dour
intractable
lissom

This week's comments
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Next week's theme
Duoliteral words

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(LIS-uhm)

MEANING:

adjective: Agile; graceful.

ETYMOLOGY:

Alteration of lithesome, from Old English lithe (flexible, mild) + -some (having a particular quality). Earliest documented use: 1800.

USAGE:

“Jorjie, still a comparatively lissom 13 stone, fills that niggling gap between lunch and dinner with two Mars Bars melted over a bowl of ice cream and Adam (19 stone) consumes 28 litres of fizzy drinks a week. Their parents, with one honourable exception, seem to regard these excesses as an intractable natural mystery.”
Thomas Sutcliffe; Last Night’s TV; The Independent (London, UK); Apr 5, 2007.

“Gyorgy Faludy dumped Eric for a lissom poetess more than 60 years his junior.”
Gyorgy Faludy; The Economist (London, UK); Sep 14, 2006.

See more usage examples of lissom in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: