[app. f. LILT v.]
1. A song or tune, esp. one of a cheerful or merry character. Chiefly Sc.
1728. Ramsay, Ep. to W. Starrat, 26. The blythest lilts that e’er my lugs heard sung.
17[?]. Jacobite Relics (1821), II. 193. Is’t some words ye’ve learnt by rote, Or a lilt o’ dool and sorrow?
1842. S. Lover, Handy Andy, v. 48. To the tune of a well-known rollicking Irish lilt.
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xli. (1874), 308. Hark to the grand lilt of the ‘Good Time Coming!’
1874. Burnand, My Time, xvi. 133. A peasant … suddenly takes up a pipe … and commences to play a lilt.
2. The rhythmical cadence or ‘swing’ of a tune or of verse. Chiefly literary.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes (1858), 253. It proceeds as by a chant…. One reads along naturally with a sort of lilt.
1869. Farrar, Fam. Speech, iii. (1873), 91. The sonorous lilt of the Greek Epic verse contrasts … with the grave unbending stateliness of the Hebrew.
1882. Stevenson, Fam. Stud. 289. The lines go with a lilt, and sing themselves to music of their own.
fig. 1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 336. This faculty of hitting the precise lilt of thought is a rare gift.
1879. Trollope, Thackeray, 75. An eagerness of description, a lilt, if I may so call it, in the progress of the narrative.
3. A springing action; a light, springing step.
1869. A. C. Gibson, Folk-Sp. Cumberld., 37.
| Lal Dinah Grayson’s fresh, fewsome, an’ free, | |
| Wid a lilt iv her step an’ a glent iv her e’e. |
1884. Daily News, 23 Sept., 6/1. A sort of ‘lilt’ in the gait, which is by no means graceful.
4. (See quot.) ? Obs. Cf. LILL sb.1
1776. Herd, Coll. Songs, II. 258. Gloss., Lilts, the holes of a wind instrument of musick; hence Lilt up a spring.
c. 1832. [see LILL sb.1 quot. 1824].
5. Comb., as lilt-like adj.
1866. Daily Tel., 10 March, 246/3. Many of the songs have that lilt-like quality which almost makes them sing themselves.
