Is my connotative sense of 'spry' too tight-fisted?

It is interesting how some adjectives come to be associated witha certain noun or set of semantically related nouns. In Latin terra was originally an adjective meaning dry, but the phrase terra X (where X is the lost word for earth) was soon reduced to just plain terra. Also happened with mundus for world. Mundus as an adjective meant something more like 'ritually clean, pure'. Funny thing language.