BURLY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Burly

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/bˈərli/ Listen

adjective

Burly adj.

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." "In his latter days, with overliberal diet, (he was) somewhat corpulent and burly." "Burly and big, and studious of his ease."

Coarse and rough; boisterous. "It was the orator's own burly way of nonsense."

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Etymology of 'Burly'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Burly" Quotes from Famous Books

... swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his Grandfather, stout Col. d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell ...

— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... aversion to this Martian girl. Yet she was not unattractive. Over six feet tall, straight and slim. Sleek blond hair. Rather a handsome face; not gray, like the burly Miko, but pink and white; stern lipped, but feminine, too. She was smiling gravely now. Her blue eyes regarded ...

— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... and Sheridan, and ex-Secretary Seward. All I mean to say is, that it is not politic or in good taste for a small man to come before an audience and claim physical superiority; that branch of the argument should be left for the great, burly fellows six feet high and well-proportioned, who illustrate the ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... sweat and with wet gray mould. The picks struck into the loose gravel with a yielding shock. The long-handled shovels clinked amidst the piles of bowlders and scraped dully in the heaps of rotten quartz. The Burly drill boring for blasts broke out from time to time in an irregular chug-chug, chug-chug, while the engine that pumped the water from the mine coughed and strangled at ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... coming, for even by this token I knew him for knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace of sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext or other to let out that great fact. But there ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

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