lissome

English

Etymology

See lissom.

Adjective

lissome (comparative lissomer, superlative lissomest)

1. Alternative spelling of lissom
   • 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, […], →OCLC, pages 29–30:

     [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.

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

     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.

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

     [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: [...]

   • 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, […], →OCLC, page 475:

     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.

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

     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.

   • 2013 June 4, Dwight Garner, “A Literary Mind, Under the Spell of Drugs and a MacBook”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Reading about their exploits is like watching lissome cows graze in a field.

Anagrams

• Miloses, Ole Miss, mesisol