colly
Americanverb (used with object)
noun
noun
verb
Etymology
Origin of colly
1555–65; variant of collow (v.), Middle English colwen, derivative of Old English col coal; see -y 1
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:
The debate raises the question: If colly was the original term, and if it referred to coal, shouldn’t the song be sung, “four coally birds?”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 21, 2016
“To think, all this time I’ve argued with my family that the correct word should be colly, and I wasn’t even pronouncing it properly!” he wrote.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 21, 2016
“As colly passed out of common usage among English-language speakers, it’s no surprise that Austin’s similar-sounding alternative calling became more popular,” he wrote.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 21, 2016
It is accepted that the original gift was actually four colly birds, meaning birds that were black.
From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2013
In another, a colly dog jumped over a coffin which a funeral party had set on the ground while they rested.
From Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by William Ralston Shedden Ralston
The moment was as “brief as the lightning in the collied night,” as Shakespeare might have said, but it changed McFarland’s life forever.
From BusinessWeek ● Nov. 29, 2012
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night.
From Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations by Various
Soft is the collied night, and cool The wind about the garden pool.
From Forty-Two Poems by James Elroy Flecker
How suggestive this, of the ephemeral fame of even a great lawyer: "Swift as shadow, short as any dream Brief as the lightning in the collied night."
From Something of Men I Have Known With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective by Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing) Stevenson
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!"
From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by John Bartlett
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.
