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. obsolete 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
- From Doiley, the name of a 17th-century London draper. (Wiktionary)
- After Doily or Doyly, 18th-century London draper. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
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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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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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...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3027 more... -
Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (D)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
desert rose, dabble, daffodil, dagger, dairymaid, daisy, damask, damson, dappled, dart, dashed, dauphin and 111 more...
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Jacqueline's Words
glittery, horny, amazing, wanderlust, forlorn, lustily, nonchalant, cool, passive, submissive, roundabout, carousel and 558 more...
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NihonGoose's Words
colander, doily, nacre, mandible, carapace, glutinous, penumbral, skein, mollify, colloquial, sanguine, chagrin and 118 more...
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wordsmith III: revenge of wordie
sedimentary, igneous, segment, surfeit, unctuous, magma, garble, ransack, concubine, coincide, metamorphic, clastic and 208 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
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pamelad's Words
lugubrious, antediluvian, decrepitude, anomaly, regurgitate, apoplexy, prolix, incapacitate, discontinuity, bellicose, inclement, frangible and 158 more...
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babble
unison, cactus, drive-in, hallo, strembonita, amurny, shampooist, shagtastic, ecbatic, doily, yappa, ness and 7 more...
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snoctipii's list
flamboyant, defenestration, jejune, doily, deportification, depontificate, satisfication, antimacassar, schadenfreude, aspidistra, frindle, absquatulate and 13 more...
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Word List 2
I don't want to have a list that's too large. So i'll make two
coccyx, memorandum, crepuscule, oodles, ambiance, starchy, condemnation, triskaidekaphobia, wreak, grotto, emanate, annul and 38 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for doily.
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