woolly
Americanadjective
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consisting of wool.
a woolly fleece.
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resembling wool in texture or appearance.
woolly hair.
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clothed or covered with wool or something resembling it.
a woolly caterpillar.
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Botany. covered with a pubescence of long, soft hairs resembling wool.
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like the rough, vigorous atmosphere of the early West in America.
wild and woolly.
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fuzzy; unclear; disorganized.
woolly thinking.
noun
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Western U.S. a wool-bearing animal; sheep.
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Usually woollies. a knitted undergarment of wool or other fiber.
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any woolen garment, as a sweater.
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Dialect. a dust ball.
adjective
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consisting of, resembling, or having the nature of wool
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covered or clothed in wool or something resembling it
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lacking clarity or substance
woolly thinking
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botany covered with long soft whitish hairs
woolly stems
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recalling the rough and lawless period of the early West of America (esp in the phrase wild and woolly )
noun
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(often plural) a garment, such as a sweater, made of wool or something similar
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(usually plural) an informal word for sheep
Regionalisms
See dust ball.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of woolly
Explanation
If something is woolly, it's covered in (or made of) soft, curly fur. Don't forget to wear your woolly hat — it's cold out there! You can use this adjective for anything made from wool, like your favorite woolly sweater or the woolly socks your grandma knits. It's also useful for things that look or feel like a sheep's woolly coat: "Look at those strange, woolly clouds!" "He shaved his woolly beard off!" Informally, it can be a great way to describe confusion or befuddlement, like the woolly thoughts that go through your mind when you're absolutely exhausted.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
True or, most likely, false, those woolly claims and epic tales of derring-do aren’t the weirdest thing about Marx.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
Gnawing, almost unbearable heartbreak acts as the catalyst for a layered analysis of the ways humans — or, in the case of “The Sheep Detectives,” humans and their woolly friends — ache to forget.
From Salon ● May 25, 2026
It’s hard to imagine an audience resisting the temptation to have the enigma central to the play’s meaning clarified, given its prominence in the plot and the drama’s woolly elusiveness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026
You'll likely know them by now, tucked away in the Arctic fjords, where the winds sweep down off snow-capped mountains and fans wear jumpers as woolly as their scarves.
From BBC ● Mar. 16, 2026
Hagrid’s face was entirely hidden by a woolly, snow-covered balaclava, but it couldn’t possibly be anyone else, as he filled most of the corridor in his moleskin overcoat.
From "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" by J. K. Rowling
Vampyrum bats prey mostly on birds they find by smell, whereas the woollies swoop down on rodents they hear rustling on the forest floor.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 11, 2023
The shop sells Stonehenge woollies, T-shirts, snowdomes, fridge magnets and jewellery.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 8, 2019
Locals in brown overalls, tweeds and woollies watch this enactment of merrie England, when armadas were seen off and men wore tights.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 22, 2013
Mrs. Groenewegen donned her woollies, put on a coat and overshoes.
From Time Magazine Archive
My woollies greasy gray, An awful change has hit the range Since that old poet's day.
From Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp by Lomax, John Avery
Upon beginning “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” the sixth feature in the animation franchise that grows woollier by the movie, you sense something amiss.
From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2022
Mr. Buck — who looks every bit the burl dealer, with his wool cap and even woollier beard — bought half a million pounds of redwood burls last year and is a presence on eBay.
From New York Times ● Apr. 9, 2014
By contrast, the BOA likes to speak of fourth in the medal table as an "aspiration", preferring instead to focus on the woollier goal of "more medals in more sports than for over a century".
From The Guardian ● Jun. 21, 2012
The wilder and woollier it was, the better.
From Time Magazine Archive
The scene of this thrilling anecdote is laid in the Far West, when it was much wilder and woollier than it is at present.
From Bert Wilson's Fadeaway Ball by Duffield, J. W.
And amid some of the woolliest spring weather in recent memory — drought, sleet, hard freezes, heat waves — my new native plantings are clambering out of the wood chips.
From New York Times ● May 26, 2010
The players enunciate all too perfectly some of the woolliest period dialogue of recent seasons.
From Time Magazine Archive
And he will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel.
From Time Magazine Archive
Friday was the day to beat all days, the wildest and woolliest in the market's history.
From Time Magazine Archive
They were, as a matter of fact, excellent stockings of the heaviest, woolliest kind, and Whitman had bought them a year and a half ago in Scotland, whither he had gone after his wife's death.
From Tutors' Lane by Lewis, W. S. (Wilmarth Sheldon)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
