Definition of "lithe"

She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought 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.

1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter III, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915

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.

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

… she danced with a kind of passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace …

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

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.

1900, Grant Allen, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter VIII, in Hilda Wade

Yet the 2016 Éxilé rosé from Lise et Bertrand Jousset in the Loire Valley, made mostly of gamay, was yeasty let light and lithe, while the 2016 Indigeno from Ancarani in Emilia-Romagna, made of trebbiano, was taut and earthy.

2018 March 8, Eric Asimov, “Bubbles, With Joy: Pétillant Naturel’s Triumphant Return”, in The New York Times‎

England.. hath now suppled, lithed and stretched their throats.

a. 1652, Thomas Adams, Physic from Heaven

Give me also faith, Lord,.. to lithe, to form, and to accommodate my spirit and members.

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

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.

1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song

lithe widely used as a verb in nEng Sc and Ir, as a noun only in Cu

1902, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, Oxford University Press, page 624

to render lithe or thick, to thicken (broth, etc.)

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

lithe 'to thicken soups, sauces, etc.'

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

lithe vt to THICKEN gravy V7.7 la:ð Y, laɪð Y Nt L, laɪð La Nt L

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