Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A small ornamental mat, usually of lace or linen.
- n. A small table napkin.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An old kind of woolen stuff. Also used attributively.
- n. A small ornamental napkin, often in colors, fringed and embroidered, and brought on the dinner-table on a dessert-plate, with the finger-bowl, etc., arranged upon it: also used for many similar purposes.
- n. Also spelled doyley.
Wiktionary
- n. A small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A kind of woolen stuff.
- n. A small napkin, used at table with the fruit, etc.; -- commonly colored and fringed.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a small round piece of linen placed under a dish or bowl
Etymologies
- After Doily or Doyly, 18th-century London draper.
Examples
“A small round doily is pasted down, and roses are cut from a seed catalog.”
“Then, the doily is folded on each side, making it look like a lace holder.”
“A paper doily is added to the square cake on the right.”
“The brandy, not the 400 post commemorative doily, that is.”
“Paul, a doily is a piece of fabric, often chocheted, or embroidered linen, which sits a on table, sideboards or similar.”
“It looked like a doily, which is okay for my Grandpa's armchair, but really not okay for an Academy Awards dress.”
“Gwen maintains that "doily" is perfectly legitimate.”
TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
“We mainly attend the base chapel now, where only one woman, an older lady from the Phillippines, wears a cover, a round lace "doily".”
“JB gives us our own little doily clad haven, and in come the men.”
“My great-great-grandmother Maud Riordan Florian McNulty completely botched a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria by slipping rat poison into her lime shandy when she attended a doily exhibition in Killarney in 1867.”
The Wall Street Journal: Tracing My Roots and Coming Up With Dirt
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘doily’.
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please pass the ly
Words that end in -ly that are nouns.
Please do not include words with double ll, for instance: ally, bully, belly; or words that can also be adjectives, for instance: elderly, melancholy.contumely, family, supply, reply, anomaly, assembly, doily, fly, homily, lily, monopoly, panoply and 20 more...
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Oily
Words and phrases that have "oil" in them.
oil, oily, olive oil, crude oil, toil, boil, trefoil, foil, roil, broil, coil, soil and 70 more...
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bepetersen's list
Words that I think should be banned from the English language
spittle, supper, crusty, moist, engorged, crotch, sinew, salve, suckle, mauve, damp, squat and 34 more...
chained_bear See explanation on d'oyley. Apr 12, 2010
iarwain Evelyn, a modified dog, viewed the quivering fringe of a special doily, draped across the piano with some surprise. -- Frank Zappa
It's unclear as to whether or not there should be a comma after "piano." When Frank sings/says it, there is no comma, and while it is more accessible with a comma, it works somewhat without. May 19, 2009
snoctipii hehehe this is just so much fun to say... doilydoilydoily! okok i'm done. [: Mar 9, 2008
pamelad Found with the antimacassar and the aspidistra. Dec 18, 2006