LILT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Lilt

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/lɪlt/ Listen

noun

Lilt n.

Animated, brisk motion; spirited rhythm; sprightliness. "The movement, the lilt, and the subtle charm of the verse."

A lively song or dance; a cheerful tune. "The housewife went about her work, or spun at her wheel, with a lilt upon her lips."

verb

Lilt v. t. To utter with spirit, animation, or gayety; to sing with spirit and liveliness. "A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous epic lilted out By violet-hooded doctors."

Lilt v. i.

To do anything with animation and quickness, as to skip, fly, or hop. (Prov. Eng.)

To sing cheerfully. (Scot.)

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Etymology of 'Lilt'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lilt" Quotes from Famous Books

... pounded out of the room and there was a clatter of dishes that ably expressed her frame of mind. Above the clatter and down from the children's bedroom floated Lydia's little contralto lilt: ...

— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... was falling. It was rather an impressive moment and the pipers, rising to the occasion, played "Blue bonnets o'er the Border." Behind was the sunset in a sky of brilliant crimson. In front stretched great uplands of a dim green, while we, the new Crusaders, crossed over to the lilt of the pipes, whose music astonished Palestine now heard for the first time; and with us in great columns moved guns and cavalry, camels and transport, half seen in a haze of hanging dust. These of course are after thoughts, at the time one's point of view was rather different. One asked oneself ...

— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... of his life, and have left something if not of the courage for the fight, at least of the gaiety of living behind them. Two of them are written to his wife, many of them to friends; some of them have the lilt and the brightness of songs, others, like If this were Faith and The Woodman, are filled with the gravity of life and the bitterness of the whole world's ...

— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... the love of pleasure. The guitars and banjos were playing some wailing tune, with a note of sadness in the core of it so keen and penetrating that it made the water come to Harry's eyes. But it changed suddenly to something that had all the sway and lilt of the rosy South. Men sprang to their feet and clasping arms about one another began to sway back and forth in the ...

— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody," he writes at another time. His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. He probably heard them as did Milton the lines of "Paradise Lost". Sometimes there was a lilt like the singing of a bird, and sometimes the lyric cry, and yet again the music of the orchestra. "He has an ear for the distribution of instruments, and this gives him a desire for the antiphonal, for introducing an answer, or an echo, or ...

— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

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