Crossword clues for burly
burly
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Burly \Bur"ly\ (b[^u]r"l[y^]), a. [OE. burlich strong, excellent; perh. orig. fit for a lady's bower, hence handsome, manly, stout. Cf. Bower.]
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Having a large, strong, or gross body; stout; lusty; -- now used chiefly of human beings, but formerly of animals, in the sense of stately or beautiful, and of inanimate things that were huge and bulky. ``Burly sacks.''
--Drayton.In his latter days, with overliberal diet, [he was] somewhat corpulent and burly.
--Sir T. More.Burly and big, and studious of his ease.
--Cowper. -
Coarse and rough; boisterous.
It was the orator's own burly way of nonsense.
--Cowley.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, perhaps from Old English burlic "noble, stately," literally "bowerly," fit to frequent a lady's apartment (see bower). Sense descended through "stout," and "sturdy" by 15c. to "heavily built." Another theory connects the Old English word to Old High German burlih "lofty, exalted," related to burjan "to raise, lift."
Wiktionary
a. 1 (context usually of a man English) Large, well-built, and muscular. 2 (context UK slang East End of London English) Great, amazing, unbelievable. 3 (context US slang surf culture and/or Southern California English) Of large magnitude, either good or bad, and sometimes both.
WordNet
Usage examples of "burly".
He arced the scimitar into the neck of a burly Automaton, then pivoted to slice his blade into the head of a deranged woman.
Behind Koch-Roche, with a burly nurse at each elbow, Senator Ludlow Baculum sat slumped in a wheelchair, his hands on his knees.
His father was a trader from Zuu, a tall, burly man, much like the late Prince Blane, who had chosen to stay his winters with one of the local women.
WAS replaced by a burly police officer called Dave shortly after Mr Blaws had departed.
Their goal was in plain sight, and their strides quickened when a burly, brutish monster stepped from the fine tent.
A bundle that squirmed, cooed, then let out a resounding burp more suitable to a burly ale master.
Luis walked quickly through the crowd, careful not to be bumped by any of the burly bustlers leaving or greeting the train.
If you could see him now, past seventy, with shoulders of a longshoreman and a barrel-chest sloping down to his burly equator, if you could hear him swear through a mustache Hindenburg would be proud to own, you would understand he could, had it been necessary, have put that colonel on his back, and laughed at the court-martial that would have been sure to follow.
Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Markgraf von Velegrad, Earl of Rutland, Baron of Strathtyne, Lord Commander of the Royal Horse of the Kingdom of England and Wales, and presently under loan with his personal troops and ships to His Royal Highness Brian, Ard-Righ of Ireland, had made his formal and respectful greetings to the Ard-Righ, he waited in silence to learn just why he had been so peremptorily summoned to attend the burly monarch here in his fortified palace at Lagore.
She and Bailey were busy loading a vacuum dishwasher with dirty metalware, having been assigned to assist the burly Marine cook who headed the commissary department.
The burly Hugh outwrestled his man and bashed him a few times till he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Gilder and Grimshaw quickly returned to the land, leaving the burly Plater to make a vigorous attack with an axe against the sides of one of the wheat bins.
Flip, Gleet, a small but burly Roden named Ket, and Pleep, and a grey-muzzled elder female called Noot were selected to lead Alex to the Towers.
The burly guards stepped out over the sides of the chariot, and the young princeling stretched and sat up in his bed.
In his place Vernon Quayle engaged a sour, burly man from Southampton.