burly
/ˈbɜːli/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.82 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Large, well-built, and muscular.
Example Sentences
- "He’s a big, burly rugby player who works as a landscape gardener."
- "With no great disparity between them in point of years, they were, in every other respect, as unlike and far removed from each other as two men could well be. The one was soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech."
- "She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven, burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp."
- "Yossarian responded to the thought by slipping away stealthily from the police and almost tripped over the feet of a burly woman of forty hastening across the intersection guiltily, darting furtive, vindictive glances behind her toward a woman of eighty with thick, bandaged ankles doddering after her in a losing pursuit."
- "That goal was burly."
- "Kimi Räikkönen is a burly Formula 1 driver."
Etymology
From Middle English burly, burely, borly, burlich, borlich, borlic (“tall, stately”), of uncertain origin. Cognate with Scots burely, burly (“rough, stout, sturdy, strong”). Perhaps from Old English *būrlīċ (“noble, stately”, literally “bowerly”), equivalent to bower + -ly; or from Old English *byrlīċ (“high, raised”), from byre (“raised area, mound”), cognate with Old High German burlīh, purlīh (“lofty, elevated, high, exalted”), related to Old High German burjan (“to raise, lift, push up”), English burgeon. However, Irish burla (“bundle, pack; burly person”) points to a different origin.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈbɜːli/
- British English: /ˈbɜːli/
Usage
Inflected Forms
burlier (comparative)
burliest (superlative)
bowerly (alternative)
more burly (comparative)
most burly (superlative)