Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To make foul or dirty; grime, as with the smut of coal; blacken.
- n. The black grime or soot of coal or burned wood.
- n. See collie.
Wiktionary
- adj. UK, dialect black as coal
- v. transitive, archaic to make black, as with coal
- n. UK, dialect Soot.
- n. UK, dialect A blackbird
- n. dated alternative spelling of collie.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete The black grime or soot of coal.
- v. Archaic. To render black or dark, as of with coal smut; to begrime.
- n. A kind of dog. See collie.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make soiled, filthy, or dirty
Etymologies
- From Middle English cole ("coal") + -y (Wiktionary)
Examples
“colly" birds, colly referring to soot or coal black.”
“For the fourth day colly birds - or is it calling birds?”
The Huffington Post: Stephenie Foster: 12 Days of Giving to Support Women and Girls Globally
“• Remember to give your true love four colly/calling birds on this fourth day of Christmas.”
“He's the raven master who looks after nine very large, very important colly birds -- black ravens.”
“That was a slang name for the blackbird -- calling birds, colly birds.”
“Nao no kitteh but haz border colly, 2 big 2 lift 2 seeling, sew whee send hur 2 chais da ebil skwerls orf da burds fooders.”
Spider cat, Spider cat - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“Dey iz after teh French hens an teh colly birds an teh partridge an teh swans an teh milk frum teh milkmayds!”
Alfred Hitchcock presents - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“You mean, he may get himself up as a colly-something - a beetle-lover - and go and sit solemnly in the meetings at the Town Hall, while everyone is looking for him elsewhere.”
“But after they met us, and digested all the implications, they would develop the colly-wobbles no end.”
“My ain kind dearie, O! Nae herds wi 'kent or colly there,”
The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘colly’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
A Glossary of Filth
A compilation of those nitty-gritty yucky terms for substances and situations that we prefer not to encounter. Please folks, keep it clean; avoid the overly offensive ones.
"the terms...schmutz, smegma, muck, snarge, sewerage, mecomium, sewage, sebum, toe jam, pus, sludge, backwash and 130 more...
-
Eocene (Eosin) (Eoscene) (Eoseen) Eng...
Dawn Words in English
swefnum, swefna, secgan, goste, wealhstod, wald-swathu, hearpan, hwaet, leothcraeft, beorhtost, wyrd, dustsceawung and 131 more...
-
Black or White
black and white, snow-white, coal-black, blacksmith, whitesmith, blackball, white-box testing, Blackberry, white pages, black book, white paper, blacklist and 107 more...
-
Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
-
Good Olde English
yean, nave, ilk, daw, lode, brae, scurf, yond, quench, throng, eftsoons, fang and 26 more...
-
Dirty Words & Things Begrimed
Soiled, dirty, ruined, spoiled, rotten and the like.
besmirch, tawdry, recrement, syrtic, ordure, coprolite, cowblakes, bemire, dingy, pestiferous, vomitory, mysophilia and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for colly.
sarra The Twelve Days of Christmas: four colly birds (=blackbirds), not calling birds. Dec 12, 2008