Definition of "lissom"

Now, our country lads, [...] are so much better made, so much more athletic, and yet so much lissomer—to use a Hampshire phrase, which deserves at least to be good English.

1824, Mary Russell Mitford, “A Country Cricket-match”, in Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, London: G[eorge] and W. B. Whittaker, […], page 147

A brig you see, sir, is much more laboursome in a gale of wind. A Schooner is much lissomer built.

1838, “Conversation V. King of Spain’s Journey—Difference of Ships.”, in Conversations of a Father with His Children, 5th edition, volume II, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], page 41

[T]he most striking object was the long array of shoes and boots of all lengths, breadths, and thicknesses; high-lows, low-highs, lace-ups, mud-boots, waders, and snow-boots. If they were not waterproof, as they professed to be, the only question was, as it appeared to me, how they ever got dry and lissome again, when they were once wet.

1841, [Joseph Thomas James Hewlett], chapter I, in Theodore [Edward] Hook, editor, Peter Priggins, the College Scout. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], pages 29–30

[Y]onder sly old trout has seen too much of us; there, taking advantage of an escort of the smaller fry, he's off while we speak; and one flap of his lissom tail has carried him ten yards away: [...]

1843, “M. F. T.”, “Country Pleasures; and therein Chiefly, of Angling and Fly-fishing”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XIII, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 261

Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand; / Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair / In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell / Divides threefold to show th'fruit within.

1855, Alfred Tennyson, “The Brook; an Idyl”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], page 105

[A] robe / Of samite without price, that more exprest / Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, / In colour like the satin-shining palm / On sallows in the windy gleams of March: [...]

1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Vivien”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], pages 104–105

We do not pretend to say the number of arms the character [Siva] properly demands; but this matters the less, that the lissomest of human beings could not compass the proper pose even for a moment.

1869, “Art. III.—Comparative Hinduism.”, in The Calcutta Review, volume XLIX, number 98, Calcutta: Barnham, Hill, & Co., […]; London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, […], page 41

We have the hot women and the passionate men. We have lissome forms clinging. We have hot kisses showered. We have hero and heroine, by the merest accident of course, placed in exciting situations.

1870 April, William Mackay, “A Council of Three”, in William Harrison Ainsworth, editor, The New Monthly Magazine, volume CXLVI, number DXCII, London: Adams and Francis, […], page 475

The joy in life of these animals—indeed, of almost all animals and birds in freedom—is very great. You may see it in every motion: in the lissom bound of the hare, the playful leap of the rabbit, the song that the lark and the finch must sing; [...]

1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter I, in Wild Life in a Southern County, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], page 11

There she was at last—taller, lissomer than ever, her green bag swinging in her hand and a gay lilt of a tune on her lips.

1900, S[amuel] R[utherford] Crockett, “Carnation’s Morning Joy”, in The Stickit Minister’s Wooing, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday & McClure Co., page 90

It was a little narrow, twisting path, [...] It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches, white-stemmed and lissom boughed; [...]

1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “A Tempest in the School Teapot”, in Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, published August 1909 (11th printing), page 149

At last, with the approach of dusk, the lissom figure of young William hastened past my window-pane, followed by the less lissom figure of big Jock, [...]

1923 March, A. Neil Lyons, “‘Please, Sir, the Plumber!’”, in The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume LXV, London: George Newnes, Limited, […], page 274, column 1

Well, let me tell you, Jeeves, and you can paste this in your hat, shapeliness isn't everything in this world. In fact, it sometimes seems to me that the more curved and lissome the members of the opposite sex, the more likely they are to set Hell's foundations quivering.

1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins

What's estimable anyways in human kind? / The lissomest somatics and electest mind / Would perish undistinguished, dealt the selfsame hands / In undernourished epochs or unlettered lands, [...]

2004, Arnold Klein, Nagel, San Francisco, Calif.: Browntrout Publishers, page 24

In his head, language flows, lithe and lissom, eloquent, all that he would say, all that he would like to tell her of what he has been feeling, what he has been thinking.

2011, Penelope Lively, How It All Began, London: Fig Tree, Penguin Books; republished London: Penguin Books, 2012, page 216

By then I would be living in a city somewhere, writing and drinking and living the life. I would have a beautiful slim lissom girlfriend with dark eyes and big breasts.

2015, Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Don Bartlett, Dancing in the Dark [...] Translated from the Norwegian (My Struggle; 4), London: Vintage, page 60