Visual Dictionary: Lithe
Welcome to Visual Dictionary, a series of posts about words that are better expressed in pictures.
This woman is quite lithe.
You could also say she is limber or lissome.
There are more words for flexible that you wouldn’t typically use to describe an entire person. For instance, supple (commonly used to describe skin or leather) and plastic (the point of plastic surgery is that it bends and reshapes parts of the body).
The words pliant and malleable can physically describe something like clay, or can metaphorically describe someone who bends to the will of others, a pushover.
Try this Sentence Completion problem:
Although they were twins, they couldn’t have been more different: she was a ________ ballerina, and he was a ________ but gentle giant who often broke things unintentionally.
A. lithe … ratiocinating
B. lissome … sashaying
C. flexible … craven
D. supple … tyrannical
E. limber … lumbering
In the second blank, we are looking for something on the opposite side of “ballerina,” and which also fits with a “giant” who often breaks things. The answer is E; she is limber, he is lumbering.