• IPA: /laɪð/

lithe (lithes, present participle lithing; past lithed, past participle lithed)

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To go.

lithe (comparative lither, superlative lithest)

1. (obsolete) Mild; calm.

   Synonyms: clement, gentle, mellow

   lithe weather

2. Slim but not skinny.

   Synonyms: lithesome, lissome, swack, Thesaurus:slender

   lithe body

   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter III, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384 ↗:

     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.

3. Capable of being easily bent; flexible.

   Synonyms: pliant, flexible, limber, Thesaurus:flexible

   the elephant’s lithe proboscis.

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

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

4. Adaptable.

• -inda
• lind
• linden
• Linda

• Portuguese: calmo, tranquilo

• French: svelte, élancé

• French: souple

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To become calm.
2. (transitive, obsolete) To make soft or mild; soften; alleviate; mitigate; lessen; smooth; palliate.

   • The holy spirit, by his grace, lithes and turns out heart to God.

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

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

lithe (lithes, present participle lithing; past and past participle lithed)

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

lithe (plural lithes)

1. (Scotland) Shelter.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song:

     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.