Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Neat and orderly: "A small, ruly beard balances his hair” ( Whitney Balliett).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pitiable; miserable.
- Pitiably; miserably.
- Conforming to rule; not unruly; acting rightly; righteous.
- Orderly; well-regulated.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Orderly; easily restrained; -- opposed to
unruly .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. neat and tidy
Etymologies
- Back-formation from unruly, or perhaps a continuation of Middle English ruly, reuli ("subject to a religious rule, regular"), equivalent to rule + -ly, rule + -y; or perhaps from Old French rulé, reulé, rieulé ("ruled"), past participle of rieuler ("to rule"). More at rule. (Wiktionary)
- Back-formation from unruly. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Honestly, I'll take back all [alleged] racist remarks and never do it again, truly ruly, please believe me [flutters eyes beguilingly].”
“I've been talking to people here, they're pretty -- you know, they've been very ruly, and we're up above the crowd.”
“Do not vote -- individually, in droves, as a family, as a community, as a congregation, as a ruly mob, whatever feels most congenial.”
“But, as Vincent Canby of The New York Times observed at the belated premiere of I Am Curious (Yellow), “The crowds were large, mostly middle-aged and ruly.””
“Are they going to be ruly, will it get out of hand?”
“Washington D.C., ruly aftermath, unruly aftermath, that is, of all things, at a homeland security press conference.”
“T ruly, the tide has turned, in the mere space of nine years, the government has brought changes that have completely confounded both friend and foe.”
“I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.”
“Still ... my hair is ... the unruliest ruly hair you'll ever come across.”
“As we discussed the intricacies of many policy positions, we were moved by the vision of the many millions in our country who are poor and destitute - the unemployed, the homeless, the landless, those who, despite our ruly heroic efforts over the last three years, still have no access to clean water, to health care, to decent classrooms, to ordinary food.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ruly’.
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Deprefixed words
A list of words you more frequently hear used with prefixes than without.
clement, witting, ravel, whelm, fettered, licit, couth, bridled, wieldy, kempt, ingenuous, iterate and 116 more...
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Potpourri
eponymous, aa, pulchritude, gizmo, macabre, sui generis, solecism, solipsism, eldritch, samizdat, queue, obsequious and 469 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Words to Try to Use in Colloquial Spe...
surquedry, equivocate, putative, turgid, congeries, irrefragable, quiddity, zaftig, flagitious, bloviate, perfidy, compendious and 227 more...
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Rognons of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for terms and phrases that don't fit into any of my other lists.
priorship, exigeant, refectory, reestablish, capper, reesed, quar, reprune, orificial, reaming-iron, terminist, terminism and 3097 more...
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fitting words
a list of words from the indo european root ar- and variations : to fit together
ambry, rede, coarctate, anarthrous, artiodactyl, exordium, harmony, army, armoire, arm, armada, armadillo and 349 more...
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wordn't-you-just-know-it
autopolyploid, stimthought, vandanbladderstiddle, word's eye view, ménagerie à trois, technonotice, bluebell, slanticular, ante-jentacular, splunge, turkish room, uxorial and 770 more...
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Prosie: How I Met My Wife
by Jack Winter
Published 25 July 1994, The New Yorker
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and conso...requited, committal, at a godly hour, defatigable, to much avail, choate, advertently, nomer, up to some good, savory character, mayed, bunk a few myths and 52 more...
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sans prefix
cumber, fatigable, wieldy, ruly, prandial, humously, combobulate, couth, crepit, dain, prave, ert and 25 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ruly.

reesetee Aw, shucks. *blushing*
OED has a new website? *trembles* Dec 9, 2010
pterodactyl I'm going to take this opportunity to plug reesetee's Prosie "How I Met My Wife", which I dearly love. Dec 9, 2010
qroqqa Unable to face the OED's new website, I'm going to guess that a noun 'unrule' is attested first (cf. extant 'misrule'). Dec 9, 2010
hernesheir Wordnik's etymological definition states it is a back-formation of unruly. So what does ruly mean, and why is the "un" gloss presumed to have come first? Dec 8, 2010