Lithe means slim, supple and moving easily. A lithe dancer, lithe and quick, move lithely.
It praises the movement rather than the shape, which is why it suits dancers and cats and does not simply mean thin. The Old English word meant gentle or mild, and the sense of suppleness came later.
1adjectivelitheSlim, supple and moving easily.
“The lithe cat leapt onto the fence and walked along it without a wobble.”
lithe is a quality of movement.
Old English lithe means gentle or mild, from a Germanic root. The sense of supple flexibility came later.
Proto-Indo-European
*lentos
Proto-Germanic
*linþaz
Proto-West Germanic
*linþ(ī)
Old English
līþe — gentle, mild
Middle English
lithe
English, today
lithe
From Middle English lithe, from Old English līþe (“gentle, mild”), from Proto-West Germanic linþ(ī), from Proto-Germanic linþaz, from Proto-Indo-European lentos. Akin to stq lied (“thin, skinny, gaunt”), Danish, Dutch, and archaic German lind (“mild”). Some sources also list Latin lenis (“soft”) and/or Latin lentus (“supple”) as possible cognates.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA