Spry means lively and quick on your feet, especially in somebody old. Up the stairs without holding the rail.
The age is almost always implied, which is worth knowing, since describing a twenty-year-old as spry sounds odd and describing an eighty-year-old that way is a compliment. It suggests energy that has survived rather than energy that is expected. The word is a little old-fashioned and warm, and it usually appears with an age attached, as in spry at ninety. Nimble is the neutral word for the same physical quickness.
1adjectivespryActive and quick in movement, especially for an older person.
“Her grandfather is still spry at eighty-eight.”
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)preg- — to strew, jerk, sprinkle, scatter
Proto-Germanic
*sprēkiz — lively
Old Norse
sprækr — nimble, lively
English, today
spry
From British dialectal sprey, from Old Norse sprækr (“nimble, lively”) from Proto-Germanic sprēkiz (“lively”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)preg- (“to strew, jerk, sprinkle, scatter”). Cognate with Icelandic sprækur (“lively, spry”), Norwegian sprek (“lively, healthy”), dialectal Swedish sprygg (“brisk, very active, skittish”). More at spark. Related to sprack, sprig, sprug, freckle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 29 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word