Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Heavy, strong, and muscular; husky. See Synonyms at muscular.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Great in bodily size; bulky; large; stout: formerly used of things, but now only of persons, and implying some degree of coarseness.
- Boisterous; loud.
- Synonyms Massive, Ponderous, etc. See bulky.
- To make burly; cause to bulge out.
- Having burls or excrescent knots: as, a burly tree.
Wiktionary
- adj. Large, well-built, and muscular.
- adj. Originating from the east end of London, England. An expressive term to mean something is good, awesome, amazing, unbelievable. e.g That goal was burly, or Räikkönen is a burly Formula 1 driver.
- adj. Originating from surfer culture and/or Southern California. An expressive term to mean something is of large magnitude, either good or bad, and sometimes both. e.g. "That wave was burly!" (meaning it was large, dangerous and difficult to ride). "This hike is going to be burly, but worth it because there is good body surfing at that beach." (meaning the hike is going to be hard work).
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. 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.
- adj. Coarse and rough; boisterous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. muscular and heavily built
Etymologies
- Middle English burlich, from Old English *borlic, excellent; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“There is no doubt in my mind that the word burly isn't interchangeable with the terms cut or svelte.”
“She has managed to get in a barroom brawl, threatened to shoot a mayoral staffer as well as have him beaten up, and twice called a burly and bald fellow council member “Shrek” during a public hearing.”
“That was 25 years ago, but I still recall the burly driv ...”
Paul Engleman: Harold and Barack: Emotional Wisdom From 1983
“That was 25 years ago, but I still recall the burly driver eying me in the rear-view mirror as we idled at a red light on Michigan Avenue.”
Paul Engleman: Harold and Barack: Emotional Wisdom From 1983
““Hey, you kids!” called a burly man on another day when we were only watchin.”
“It was a different type of tobacco that they worked in; the tobacco was called burly tobacco.”
“At the mention of the prison term the burly Xavier moved uneasily upon the bunk.”
“Living this way Jack was, of course, known to everybody -- as well known as the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the lazy girl who acted as postman and strolled about the parish once a day delivering the letters.”
“The broad-shouldered Gaines, who could easily be described as burly, remembers friends in Laurelton/Cambria Heights/South Jamaica, Queens neighborhoods of his youth "We moved around a lot," he said asking if he was headed to football practice, when he was on his way to dance rehearsal.”
“Al-Murisi, described as a burly man, got up from his seat near the back of the plane and "walked briskly" toward the front, where he began yelling and tried to open the cockpit door by turning the handle, police and witnesses said.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘burly’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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The Secret Garden
sickly, fretful, toddle, cross, stammer, manor, slink, grind, disdain, imploringly, wring, wailing and 30 more...
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Words that look like adverbs but aren't
manly, womanly, ungainly, slovenly, homily, costly, dastardly, family, sparkly, wrinkly, oily, orderly and 69 more...
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GRE
abase, broach, brocade, burgeon, bungle, bureaucracy, burly, burnished, browbeat, brusque, bucolic, buffoonery and 20 more...
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I am : physical
Describing appearance and physique. More quantitative than qualitative/comparative. Can be used to sum a person up one-wordedly. (Still working on the definition of what I want in this list.)
handsome, beautiful, pretty, comely, ugly, rugged, buxom, buff, chiseled, svelte, lithe, portly and 35 more...
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Words for Big
Words, terms and phrases that denote big, bigness, or making something bigger.
enlarge, giant, giantess, biggify, enormous, enhance, augment, whopper, swell, swollen, inflated, gigantic and 52 more...
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Oh my GRE!
list of painstaking words i frequently forget.
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