Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Played or sung in an animated manner; giving lively utterance to a lilt or song.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having a lilt; with energy, spirit and sprightliness; lively and cheerful.
- n. type of lively singing without any musical accompaniment, where the tune itself is sung.
- v. present participle of lilt.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. having a light rhythmical cadence.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characterized by a buoyant rhythm
Examples
“We happen into a traditional jam session with the legendary Mary Bergin on tin whistle (the instrument some hold responsible for making the Titanic sound track the bestselling of all time), Johnny "Ringo" McDonagh on Bodhran drum (he was a solo in Riverdance for four years and one of the groundbreakers in the musical vocabulary of the instrument) and Steve Sweeney lilting, which is a kind of mouth music along the lines of a Gaelic Bobby McFerrin.”
“She laughed, softly and with a kind of lilting warmth.”
“I try not to overuse the word "lilting" when describing a band's music; it's one of those adjectives that really has to be earned by a certain sweet, heartfelt buoyancy in the way a song is performed.”
“What happens when all flags burn together?" he wonders in Jeopardy, over lilting guitar and cheerful trumpets.”
“She placed the slimy cud behind her, picking up another shock of lazy, lilting grasses — she selected two, let the remains scuttle greenily in the wind, placed a leafy scythe to my lips.”
“The real star is director Ava Roy, whose masterful use of the entire island was both subtle and innovative; at times organic (the gravedigger scene was on a small mountain of rubble) and striking (Ophelia's madness was played inside a wide open hospital room threaded with white twine, empty birdcages, and lilting bird down.)”
The Huffington Post: Lauren Gunderson: Wild and Whirling Words: An Audacious Hamlet on Alcatraz
“When I came home, I found myself drinking in the simplest things -- the blessing of a refreshing breeze, the velvet texture of newly cut grass, a small child's lilting laughter.”
“Then we shift into the lilting melodies of two Russian lullabies, "Little Birch Tree" and "Good Night.”
The Huffington Post: Brenda Peterson: Sing, Make a Joyful Sound: How Singing Helps Us
“He enlists the young bassist phenom Esperanza Spalding to add her lilting voice to the Latin inspired composition " Salsa for Luisito" where he and percussionist Luisito Quintero parry and play together in joyous rhythmic synchronicity.”
“Tim Ries lilting tenor solo is perfectly complimented by Quintero's infectious congas.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lilting’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Sounds
words that describe sound
atchoo, atishoo, babble, bam, bay, beep, blast, blather, bleat, bleep, blip, bong and 242 more...
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Words describing singing voices
mellifluous, gravelly, rusty bathtub, velvet fog, howling, laconic, fluttering, quavery, hypnotic, stilted, lilting, sonorous and 47 more...
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Descriptions of Sound
jingling, gurgling, horrisonous, horrisonant, crepitant, screeching, ringing, sonorous, clamorous, rattling, roaring, breathy and 71 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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kirstenio's Words
lascivious, transcendant, phantasmagoria, salacious, beatitude, solitude, pseudo, pretentious, inanity, sublimation, clobber, obscurity and 186 more...
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mariposa417's Words
cerulean, jewel, malfeasance, precipice, crossroads, beautiful, adore, sublime, superfluous, poppy, monarch, lashes and 101 more...
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caspermilktoast's Words
frenetic, farrago, fandango, ensemble, assay, emulsion, taut, winnow, ridonkulous, ginormous, frisson, idee fixe and 181 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (L)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
labyrinth, lace, lad, lady fingers, lagoon, lamb, lament, lammas, lantern, larkspur, lass, lauds and 92 more...
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just words.
coquette, solecism, peripherally, recrudescence, viscid, turpitude, sententious, light-heeled, interminably, unflappable, palpably, solicitous and 215 more...
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Some Words I Love to Use
arcology, strumpet, crux, confected, pedant, bluestocking, cogitation, incensed, lovecraftian, cygnet, dactyl, adytum and 539 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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fragile/lovely words
incandescent, scintillating, sublime, stellar, fragile, bones, illuminate, luscious, celestial, crepuscular, penumbra, wanderlust and 111 more...
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Words suggested in response to Funk's...
In response to Wilfred J. Funk's "ten most beautiful words in the English language" list of 1932.
beer, rum, rye, sauterne, sherry, brandy, bourbon, Scotch, champagne, cocktail, lyric, serenity and 137 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for lilting.

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