Sprightly means lively and full of energy, especially when old. A sprightly eighty-year-old, sprightly and quick, still sprightly.
It is nearly always used of older people, which makes it faintly patronising however kindly it is meant. The spelling is a puzzle: it comes from sprite, the spirit, by way of an old spelling spright, and the gh was never pronounced. Note spirit, from the same Latin.
1adjectivesprightlyLively and full of energy, especially when old.
“My grandmother is still sprightly at ninety and walks to the shops every day.”
sprightly is a quality of liveliness.
Spright plus -ly, from an old spelling of sprite, from Latin spiritus, breath or spirit. The gh was never pronounced.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)peys- — to blow; to breathe
Latin
spīritus — air; breath; breathing; ghost, spirit
Old French
espirit
Middle French
esprit
Anglo-Norman
esprite
Middle English
sprit — principle of life; soul, especially at the point of death; immaterial being (angel, demon, apparition, ghost, etc.); divine inspiration; Holy Spirit; the mind, intellect, reason; mental faculties, senses; power of prophecy; character, disposition; courage, resolution; mood, state of mind; human will; breath; (alchemy) volatile substance
English, today
sprightly
Built from
From spright + ly. spright is an obsolete variant of sprite (“a shade, spirit; elf, fairy, goblin; apparition, ghost”), from Middle English sprit (“principle of life; soul, especially at the point of death; immaterial being (angel, demon, apparition, ghost, etc.); divine inspiration; Holy Spirit; the mind, intellect, reason; mental faculties, senses; power of prophecy; character, disposition; courage, resolution; mood, state of mind; human will; breath; (alchemy) volatile substance”)spreit, spreite, spret, sprete, spright, sprite, spriʒt, from Anglo-Norman esprite, esprit and Middle French esprit, variants of Anglo-Norman -, Middle French -, Old French espirit, esperit (“spirit”), from Latin spīritus (“air; breath; breathing; ghost, spirit”), from spīrō (“to breathe; to breathe out, exhale”) (from Proto-Indo-European (s)peys- (“to blow; to breathe”)) + -tus (“suffix forming verbal nouns from verbs”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA