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LISSOM (adj.)
Definition(s):
- (adj.) flexible; pliant
- (adj.) lithe; moving with ease and grace; agile
Useful information for game players:
- Front hooks: (none)
- Back hooks: -E
- Anagrams: (none)
- Longer extensions: -LY, -ELY, -ENESS, -ENESSES
- Wraparounds: (none)
- Other Spellings: (none)
- Related Forms: LISSOME
Epilogue:
This word, with or without an E on the end, is merely a contracted form of LITHESOME. The base word LITHE is very old, having appeared in Old English as early as the 800s and deriving from an Old Germanic word meaning “gentle, mild.” LITHE was used to mean “gentle or mild” for several hundred years, but by the sixteenth century it began to be used to mean “flexible or pliant” and that is the sense that has survived. The nearly-synonymous word LIMBER (“easily bent, flexible, pliant”) appeared much later (c. 1565) and is of uncertain origin. LIMBER, LISSOM(E), LITHESOME: some flexible words for a flexible and ever-changing language — and all starting with L, this week’s featured letter.
This week’s theme: Words starting with the letter L
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