What's the difference between lithe and pliant?

Lithe


Definition:

  • (v. i. & i.) To listen or listen to; to hearken to.
  • (a.) Mild; calm; as, lithe weather.
  • (a.) Capable of being easily bent; pliant; flexible; limber; as, the elephant's lithe proboscis.
  • (a.) To smooth; to soften; to palliate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He is not as lithe as he was, however, and he had to leave the field immediately after injuring his back in the act of scoring.
  • (2) Long before the Syria vote, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper complained of misogyny, and not just from the Mail , which was more interested in Kendall’s “lithe figure” than her politics.
  • (3) The acclaim for Riva and Amour are exceptional in an industry that has always preferred its mainstream stars to be fresh of face, lithe of figure and delivering their lines in English.
  • (4) He bounces into the room unaccompanied, a little stiff in the lower back perhaps, but otherwise breezy and lithe.
  • (5) While Attitude describes him as "tall and lithe and tanned with big brown eyes and a sexual charisma that envelops you like a kidnapper's sack over your head", the Daily Mail reckons Cooper is the "new Mr Darcy".
  • (6) Evolution of H2, however, occurs during growth at lithe intensities as low as 50 to 100 ft-c (540 to 1,080 lux), i.e., under conditions of energy limitation.
  • (7) The present case is the first one to expectorate bronchial lith without marked pulmonary diseases.
  • (8) This appears to be another patient with oligo-cone trichromasy (general cone dysfunction without achromatopsia), as described by Van Lith.
  • (9) He may be lithe and louche and blessed with a gossamer touch but he is fearless too, not just decorating this team but driving it on too.
  • (10) While recording from the statocyst nerve of Homarus americanus, we deflected the statolith hairs from the "rest" position they assumed after the lith was removed.
  • (11) Powerfully built, but lithe and flexible, Grosics was a key figure in Hungary's "Mighty Magyars" squad from 1947 to 1962.
  • (12) Ismene Brown, Daily Telegraph, 2001 "Liquid, lithe choreography that can draw the spectator into a spellbinding world of heightened sensation and scintillating body sculpture."
  • (13) A lithe and lethal finisher, he scored prolifically for Wolfsburg and Dinamo Zagreb before joining Bayern, for whom he struck on his debut to help win the German Super Cup.
  • (14) His camera has a tendency to linger on its subjects, their lithe, young, often barely clothed bodies lit with lush tones.
  • (15) Proteoglycan fractions isolated from cartilage extracted lith 0.15M-KCl separated into two main components on large-pore-gel electrophoresis with mobilities greater than those of proteoglycans extracted with 2.0M-CaCl2.
  • (16) The show was well reviewed by Rolling Stone : “No powerhouse band, no impossibly lithe dancing, no masterful guitar fireworks.
  • (17) The hotel is teeming with security: lithe gentlemen in loose slacks and dark glasses, trying not to kill the birthday vibe.
  • (18) He's stiff-backed and lithe, stamping his hardened feet on the ground.
  • (19) The sputum lith, 1 to 3 mm in diameter, were examined by microanalyser and by the method of X-ray diffraction, which revealed that the lith was composed of calcium carbonate and calcite in crystalline style.
  • (20) Sport benefits everyone, even those of us who don’t have a lithe, size 10 figure – indeed, us most of all.

Pliant


Definition:

  • (v.) Capable of plying or bending; readily yielding to force or pressure without breaking; flexible; pliable; lithe; limber; plastic; as, a pliant thread; pliant wax. Also used figuratively: Easily influenced for good or evil; tractable; as, a pliant heart.
  • (v.) Favorable to pliancy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But it helped that he faced only one opponent, that a pliant local media portrayed support for Sisi as a patriotic duty, and that the election came amid a continuing crackdown on all forms of opposition.
  • (2) For these sites thin and pliant fasciocutaneous flaps are ideal tissue transfers, and we favour the radial forearm flap which is raised from the distal volar forearm.
  • (3) In several instances in which preadenoidectomy mechanical obstruction of the Eustachian tube was not demonstrated, the tube appeared to have been made more pliant by the operation.
  • (4) "For the most part the rewards for acquiescing to GOC demands are risible: pomp-full dinners and meetings and, for the most pliant, a photo op with one of the Castro brothers.
  • (5) The chancellor, George Osborne, and health secretary Jeremy Hunt would be very happy to devolve these political hot potatoes to pliant and cash-strapped local bodies.
  • (6) Putin also said outside forces would use intelligence services, the media and non-governmental organisations to destabilise Russia and make it "pliant in deciding issues in favour of the interests of other governments".
  • (7) "For 40 years the tobacco companies were able to persuade pliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them, and for 40 years the tragedy continued," Gore told ABC TV's 7.30 program from Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
  • (8) President Asif Ali Zardari has vowed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida, but cuts an increasingly forlorn figure because he is seen as too pliant to the US in a country where anti-American sentiment is high.
  • (9) Like maths and music, languages sink in faster and deeper before concerns about sex and jobs besiege the pliant brain.
  • (10) If one interrupts that sort of pliant texture operatively-unless their is an urgent indication-unprofitable results must be expected, which correspond to orthopedic experiences.
  • (11) While the fashion press and the beauty industry remain invested in the idea of young women as pliant, affable and terminally anxious about getting boys to like them, real women and girls are fighting back against a culture that persists in trying to present our desires and rebrand our politics as fluffy and marketable.
  • (12) Those courts once had a reputation for independence, but that changed under Mubarak, who made changes to personnel and to the rules on the appointment of judges which over time left mainly pliant men on the bench, ready either to take “guidance” on cases or to accommodate what they imagined would be the government’s desires.
  • (13) Critics have accused Erdogan of seeking to diminish the importance of the Turkish parliament and also seeking to make the independent judiciary far more pliant.
  • (14) Some fear his next move will be to go after Jega, the electoral chief, and replace him with someone more pliant.
  • (15) The distal flap is thin and pliant due to the small amount of subcutaneous tissue and the fairly long vascular pedicle.
  • (16) It is a comfortable-seeming thing, flexible without being adjustable, giving without being pliant.
  • (17) To keep its grip, the regime uses its network of personal and official ties to Britain’s too pliant monarchy, to gullible congressional politicians, and to business and investment leaders overly impressed by its $1tn (£660bn) in cash reserves and its global investment portfolio.
  • (18) Tolokonnikova has also continued to appeal against her guilty verdict through the Moscow court system, and is one step away from it reaching the country's pliant supreme court.
  • (19) For several years the Liberal Democrat side of the government, in which I served as Nick Clegg’s national security adviser, staved off the woefully unevidenced plan (hawked around Westminster by pliant ministers since 2008) for new powers to force internet companies to retain highly personal communications data (aka the “snooper’s charter”).
  • (20) The British media may be attacked for the weakness of its investigative reporting and the salaciousness and dodgy practices of the tabloids, but I would rather err on the side of a profession that is hard to control than one that is pliant.