From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwirywir‧y /ˈwaɪəri $ ˈwaɪri/ adjective 1 THIN PERSONSTRONG PERSONsomeone who is wiry is thin but has strong muscles2 BENDwiry hair or grass is stiff and strong
Examples from the Corpus
wiry• Short, wiry, and with a dark and rather damaged complexion, he could have been a retired flyweight boxer.• The wiry Estrada flashes a partially capped smile as she gratefully recalls her first maquila job twisting electrical wires with latex-tipped fingers.• Richard Cory was a little man with wiry hair.• a wiry little Broadway show dancer from Puerto Rico• Father Vic was a wiry man in his late forties with a sharp nose and deep-set eyes.• Foresters passed us, small wiry men carrying machetes and, in one case, a crossbow for shooting birds.• About the only people who can move rapidly over such terrain are the tough and wiry park service hunters.• His father, Michael, was a short, wiry, quiet man, a sheet-metal worker.• A thin wiry woman, her name was Meg and not herself the full shilling. 