Adjacent Words

Burly definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

BURL'Y, a. [The sense probably is swelled.] Great in size; bulky; timid; falsely great; boisterous. This word is obsolete or nearly so in America; but hurly-burly is common in vulgar use, for noise, confusion, uproar.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: muscular and heavily built; "a beefy wrestler"; "had a tall burly frame"; "clothing sizes for husky boys"; "a strapping boy of eighteen"; "`buirdly' is a Scottish term" [syn: beefy, burly, husky, strapping, buirdly]

Merriam Webster's

adjective (burlier; -est) Etymology: Middle English Date: 13th century strongly and heavily built ; husky <a burly man> • burlily adverb • burliness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. (burlier, burliest) of stout sturdy build; big and strong. Derivatives: burliness n. Etymology: ME borli prob. f. an OE form = 'fit for the bower' (BOWER(1))

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Burly Bur"ly (b[^u]r"l[y^]), a. [OE. burlich strong, excellent; perh. orig. fit for a lady's bower, hence handsome, manly, stout. Cf. Bower.] 1. Having a large, strong, or gross body; stout; lusty; -- now used chiefly of human beings, but formerly of animals, in the sense of stately or beautiful, and of inanimate things that were huge and bulky. ``Burly sacks.'' --Drayton. In his latter days, with overliberal diet, [he was] somewhat corpulent and burly. --Sir T. More. Burly and big, and studious of his ease. --Cowper. 2. Coarse and rough; boisterous. It was the orator's own burly way of nonsense. --Cowley.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(burlier, burliest) A burly man has a broad body and strong muscles. He was a big, burly man. ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Stout, lusty, brawny, portly, bulky, strong, strapping, bouncing (colloq.). 2. (Obsolescent.) Boisterous, noisy, blustering, swaggering, bullying, hectoring, coarse and rough.

Moby Thesaurus

able-bodied, adipose, athletic, beefy, big, big-bellied, bloated, blowzy, bosomy, brawny, broad-shouldered, buxom, chubby, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, fat, fattish, fleshy, full, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, hippy, husky, imposing, large, lusty, meaty, muscle-bound, muscular, obese, overweight, paunchy, plump, podgy, portly, potbellied, pudgy, puffy, pursy, roly-poly, rotund, rugged, sinewy, square, squat, squatty, stalwart, stocky, stout, strapping, strong, sturdy, swollen, thewy, thick-bodied, thickset, top-heavy, tough, tubby, well-built, well-fed, well-knit, well-set, well-set-up, wiry