lithe

adj

1. (obsolete)Mild; calm.

   “lithe weather”

2. Slim but not skinny.

   “lithe body”

   “The noise of their battle with Numa had drawn an excited horde of savages from the nearby village, and a moment after the lion’s death the two men were surrounded by lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering—a thousand questions that drowned each ventured reply.”

   “She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected 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.”

   “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.”

3. Capable of being easily bent; flexible.

   “the elephant’s lithe trunk.”

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

   “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.”

4. Adaptable.

   “Yet the 2016 Éxilé rosé from Lise et Bertrand Jousset in the Loire Valley, made mostly of gamay, was yeasty let^([sic – meaning yet]) light and lithe, while the 2016 Indigeno from Ancarani in Emilia-Romagna, made of trebbiano, was taut and earthy.”

verb

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

   “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.”

3. (intransitive, obsolete)To attend; listen, hearken.
4. (transitive)To listen to, hearken to.
5. (Yorkshire, archaic, dialectal)to thicken (gravy, etc.)

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

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

   “lithe 'to thicken soups, sauces, etc.'”

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

noun

1. (Scotland)Shelter.

   “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.”