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Oily   /ˈɔɪli/   Listen
Oily

adjective
(compar. oilier; superl. oiliest)
1.
Containing an unusual amount of grease or oil.  Synonyms: greasy, oleaginous, sebaceous.  "Oily fried potatoes" , "Oleaginous seeds"
2.
Unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech.  Synonyms: buttery, fulsome, oleaginous, smarmy, soapy, unctuous.  "Gave him a fulsome introduction" , "An oily sycophantic press agent" , "Oleaginous hypocrisy" , "Smarmy self-importance" , "The unctuous Uriah Heep" , "Soapy compliments"
3.
Coated or covered with oil.
4.
Smeared or soiled with grease or oil.  Synonym: greasy.  "Get rid of rubbish and oily rags"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Oily" Quotes from Famous Books



... any of the artists deem the praise a little too oily, they can easily add such a tag as the following:—"In our humble judgment, a little more delicacy of handling would not be altogether out of place;" or, "Beautiful as the work under notice decidedly is, we recollect to have received perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... said the bartender affably. A little yellow man in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speed toward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskers ladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicants with a soup that was steaming hot, and in which there were little floating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, felt the cordiality ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... He was no judge, he said, except of what pleased himself; he had picked them up, dirt-cheap, and people had considered them rather fine. One man, who at any rate ought to know something of the subject, had declared that 'Sage, Reading' (a specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich pie-crust), to be a fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would judge for yourself; if it were not his later manner, the question was, Who was ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... he had his own little streak of superstition in spite of the fact that he fulminated against it. When he had committed some fault, after confession, he used to hang bags of relics in his room, and watch them for a sign of forgiveness. When one of these would turn oily, or begin to affect the surrounding atmosphere peculiarly, he would consider it a sign of the forgiveness of heaven. It seems to us to-day as if he might have looked to his own relic ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... hoping thus to please him; but it was no use, for he now said he must have two deoles, or he would never allow me to leave his palace. Every day matters got worse and worse. Mfumbi, the small chief of Sorombo, came over, in an Oily-Gammon kind of manner, to say Makaka had sent him over to present his compliments to me, and express his sorrow on hearing that I had fallen sick here. He further informed me that the road was closed between this and Usui, for he had just been fighting there, and had killed the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke


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