Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang One that is remarkable or extraordinary, as in size or quality: had a dilly of a fight.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An abbreviation of diligence.
- n. Same as daffodil, daffodilly.
- n. A small sapotaceous tree, Mimusops Sieberi, specifically called the wild dilly, found on the Florida keys and in the West Indies. Its wood is very heavy and hard, of a dark-brown color, and susceptible of a beautiful polish.
- n. A bag woven of grasses or of fur twisted into cord; a small bag of any material.
Wiktionary
- n. Someone or something that is remarkable or unusual.
- adj. redolent of dill (the spice)
- n. dated A kind of stagecoach.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A kind of stagecoach.
- n. something remarkable, highly unusual, or exceptionally effective.
Etymologies
- Contracted from diligence. (Wiktionary)
- Obsolete dilly, delightful, shortening and alteration of delightful. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I think you mean it's a "dilly" of an article, rather than a "ditty" of an article.”
“I have no time to describe to you what this plan was except to say that it was a "dilly", but when I hear complaints that these very expensive Royal Commission reports are almost always pigeon-holed I ask myself what else could be done with the "Solution" proposed by the last Royal Commissioner to sit in judgment on Ontario's forests.”
“Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government.”
“Anybody who dilly dallies on non-communicable diseases will be forced to act when the situation is out of control.”
The Guardian: Alarm as corporate giants target developing countries
“Stop the dilly-dallying and do something about the problem. statatheleft says:”
Matthew Yglesias » Obstructionism from Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) Boosting Lord’s Resistance Army
“Let's not dilly-dally, let's get straight on into the funny, shall we?”
“It's helped me hit the brakes in time a few times when it'd have turned out otherwise if I'd been dilly dallying along.”
“Sooner or later, we explode with it — in the form of anger toward our spouse, who comes dilly-dallying in after a day of adult interaction, interaction with people WHO WILL LISTEN.”
“You've read hints of it on the blog for months now, and I even asked for story ideas and woo hoo, I got a dilly from one of you.”
“The potatoes were followed by “dilly carrots,” and dill sour cream sauce, among other inventions.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dilly’.
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Aromata Aromatica
Fragrant things and terms that describe them. Generic names of botanical binomials aren't capitalized if the unconventional lower case form has a useful Wordnik definition. I'm primarily seeking te...
hircine, ajwain, alliin, anisaldehyde, sotolon, spicebush, sweetbox, wintergreen, valencene, citrusy, citronellal, full-bodied and 162 more...
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Archaic, obsolete words
liche, outen, sepulcher, tull, alfet, kempt, overmuckle, strude, middenstead, inquere, electrion, betide and 12 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 54 more...
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justin's Words
braii, boerewors, lekker, viva, pap, lipodystrophy, lacticacidosis, sharp, chakalaka, defaulter, eish, oof and 256 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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Just Carriages
A list of types or styles of horse-drawn carriages. Other Wordniks have made similar and more complete lists. Good for them. I prefer my own list, where you will find numerous terms not listed else...
glass coach, bachelor brougham, gharry, shigram, park coach, park drag, pony park drag, Concord coach, dress landau, Hansom cab, Victoria, body break and 57 more...
Tweets
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