Illy

adj, adv

adj, adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    cool, fresh US

    "A few more duets with Ghostface would have been illy, and even ONE track with RZA would have been the icing on a top notch cake. Regardless though to any who thought that Raekwon the Chef couldn't cook it up any more, "The Lex Diamond Story" proves that with or without RZA, he's still got it locked."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Badly; poorly.

    "The domestic presence of Lucy had begun to produce a remarkable effect upon Pierre. Sometimes, to the covertly watchful eye of Isabel, he would seem to look upon Lucy with an expression illy befitting their singular and so-supposed merely cousinly relation; […]"

Example

More examples

"The domestic presence of Lucy had begun to produce a remarkable effect upon Pierre. Sometimes, to the covertly watchful eye of Isabel, he would seem to look upon Lucy with an expression illy befitting their singular and so-supposed merely cousinly relation; […]"

Etymology

From ill + -ly.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.