lissom
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From Middle English lithsum, equivalent to lithe + -some. Doublet of lithesome.
Base: lithe
Affixes: -some
Inflected forms:
form: lissomer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: lissomest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: lissome
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Flexible and graceful in movement; lithe.
pos: adj
examples: 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.
A brig you see, sir, is much more laboursome in a gale of wind. A Schooner is much lissomer built.
[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.
[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: [...]
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.
[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: [...]
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.
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.
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; [...]
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.
It was a little narrow, twisting path, [...] It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches, white-stemmed and lissom boughed; [...]
Tall and lissom, she was sheathed from the bosom downwards in flamingo silk, and she was liberally festooned with emeralds.
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, [...]
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.
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, [...]
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.
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.
Translations: