Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sticky, bluish-gray subsurface layer of clay found in some waterlogged soils.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To shine; glance.
- To look obliquely or askance; squint.
- n. A squint or sidelong glance.
- Awry; asquint.
Wiktionary
- n. soil science A type of hydric soil, sticky, greenish-blue-grey in colour and low in oxygen.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. Scot. To squint; to look obliquely; to overlook things.
- adv. Asquint; askance; obliquely.
Etymologies
- 1920s, from Ukrainian глей (hlej, "clayey soil"), from Proto-Slavic *glĭjĭ, from *gli-jo-. Cognate of clay. (Wiktionary)
- Russian dialectal gleĭ, clay. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In coves and depressions, strongly-acid gley soils with indurated horizons occur.”
“On steep ridges, soils derived from basalt or diabase are often unstable; they tend to creep downslope, creating shallow, ledgy soils on upper slopes, and deeper, wetter gley soils on lower slopes near the bases of ridges.”
“Other features are eroded accumulations of volcanic ash, foothills, piedmont plains and coastal lowlands, Below the ash-covered slopes, soils are tundra gley, forest-tundra and brown forest types, podzols and peat.”
“But as Robert Burns would write: 'The best laid schemes of mice and men/Gang aft a-gley'.”
“The soil is yellow brown to gley soil, and to the east it is sandy loam and calcareous.”
“Despite all human efforts, our best-laid plans indeed Gang aft a-gley, an' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain.”
“There are times when "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley".”
“In other exciting gang aft a-gley news, my hotlines phone system is down.”
“My boss let us leave at 4PM today because the phones were still gang aft a-gley-ed.”
“But, as that Scottish poet wrote, "the best-laid plans o' mice an' men/ Gang aft a-gley.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gley’.
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Etymological finds
Words that have perhaps fallen out of usage.
aarde, varken, abaka, bæc, ab, abax, abhaq, baft, bæftan, abulón, abandounen, abessen and 97 more...
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Under The Kilt
Anything related to Scottish culture, cuisine, language, history and so on. Does not include Gaelic words unless acceptable (roughly speaking!) in a wider sense.
brae, machair, loch, burn, inverness, shieling, camanachd, shinty, diddy, bhoy, ghillie, brownie and 393 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
Tweets
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