Other forms: wisps
A wisp is a thin faint streak of something. Smoke, hair, cloud, or steam off a cup.
It takes of, and the word always suggests something small and about to disappear, so a wisp of smoke has nearly gone and a wisp of hair has escaped from a clip. The adjective wispy describes hair, cloud and beards. There is a use about people too, since a wisp of a girl means somebody very slight indeed. Will-o'-the-wisp is the old name for a light seen over marshes and, from that, anything unattainable.
1nounwispA small thin streak or strand of something.
“A wisp of smoke rose from the chimney.”
Old English
*wisp
Middle English
wispe
English, today
wisp
From Middle English wispe, wyspe, wips, wipse, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English wisp, wips. Cognate with West Frisian wisp, Dutch wisp (“bundle of hay or straw”), Norwegian bokmål/Swedish/Bornholm Danish visp (“handful or bundle of grass, hay, etc.”). Akin also to Middle Dutch -/Middle Low German wispel (“measure of grain”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA