Colly
adj, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Soot. British, dialectal
"besmeared with soot , colly"
- 2 A blackbird British, dialectal
- 3 Alternative spelling of collie. alt-of, alternative, dated
"Can a Whig lick the feet o' the tyrant wha usurps oor Lord's throne, and accept o' ane indulgence frae him, hurled to him as a bane to a colly dog, binding himself to think as he thinks, and to preach as he wulls it; and to flatter tyranny in church and state, to win a paltry boon!"
- 1 To make black, as with coal. archaic, transitive
"Thou hast not collied thy face enough, stinkard"
- 2 make soiled, filthy, or dirty wordnet
- 1 Black as coal. British, dialectal
"four colly birds"
Example
More examples"Thou hast not collied thy face enough, stinkard"
Etymology
From Middle English coly, from Old English *coliġ, from Proto-West Germanic *kolig, equivalent to coal + -y. Doublet of coaly.
From Middle English *colien, variant of *colwen (attested in Middle English colwed and colwinge), from Old English *colgian. More at collow.
More for "colly"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.