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• dolly
  dolly

  noun

  a doll.
• Dolly
  Dolly

  noun

  a female given name, form of Doll.

dolly

¹ American  

[dol-ee] / ˈdɒl i /

noun

dollies plural

1. Informal. a doll.

2. a low truck or cart with small wheels for moving loads too heavy to be carried by hand.

3. Movies, Television. a small wheeled platform, usually having a short boom, on which a camera can be mounted for making moving shots.

4. Machinery. a tool for receiving and holding the head of a rivet while the other end is being headed.

5. a block placed on the head of a pile being driven to receive the shock of the blows.

6. a small locomotive operating on narrow-gauge tracks, especially in quarries, construction sites, etc.

7. a short, wooden pole with a hollow dishlike base for stirring clothes while laundering them.

8. Slang. a tablet of Dolophine.

9. Also called dolly bird.  British Informal. an attractive girl or young woman.

10. (sometimes initial capital letter) an affectionate or familiar term of address, as to a child or romantic partner (sometimes offensive when used to strangers, casual acquaintances, subordinates, etc., especially by a male to a female).

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verb (used with object)

dollies, present (3rd person singular) dollied, past participle, past dollying present participle

1. to transport or convey (a camera) by means of a dolly.

verb (used without object)

dollies, present (3rd person singular) dollied, past participle, past dollying present participle

1. to move a camera on a dolly, especially toward or away from the subject being filmed or televised (often followed by in orout ).

   to dolly in for a close-up.

Dolly ² American  

[dol-ee] / ˈdɒl i /

Or Dollie

noun

1. a female given name, form of Doll.

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dolly British  

/ ˈdɒlɪ /

noun

1. a child's word for a doll

2. films television a wheeled support on which a camera may be mounted

3. a cup-shaped anvil held against the head of a rivet while the other end is being hammered

4. a shaped block of lead used to hammer dents out of sheet metal

5. a distance piece placed between the head of a pile and the pile-driver to form an extension to the length of the pile

6. cricket a simple catch

7. Also called: dolly bird.  slang an attractive and fashionable girl, esp one who is considered to be unintelligent

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verb

1. films television to wheel (a camera) backwards or forwards on a dolly

Dolly Cultural  

1. The first mammal successfully cloned — Dolly, a sheep — was born in 1996 in Scotland as the result of work by biologist Ian Wilmut (see clone). The procedure that produced Dolly involved removing the nucleus from an egg cell and placing the nucleus of an adult sheep's mammary cell into it. Further manipulations caused the egg to “turn on” all genes and develop like a normal zygote. (See totipotency.)

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Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• dollies
  plural

Participles

• dollying
  present
• dollied
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• dolly
  simple
• dollies
  simple
• have dollied
  perfect
• has dollied
  perfect
• am dollying
  progressive
• are dollying
  progressive
• is dollying
  progressive
• have been dollying
  perfect progressive
• has been dollying
  perfect progressive

Past

• dollied
  simple
• had dollied
  perfect
• was dollying
  progressive
• were dollying
  progressive
• had been dollying
  perfect progressive

Future

• will dolly
  simple
• will have dollied
  perfect
• will be dollying
  progressive
• will have been dollying
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of dolly

1600–10; 1900–05 dolly for def. 9; doll + -y ²

Explanation

A dolly is a cart with wheels and a long handle used for moving heavy objects. Instead of carrying one box at a time, stack them on a dolly and wheel them all to the van at once. A dolly is an L-shaped device with a flat base that slides easily underneath a box or piece of furniture. Tilt the dolly back on its wheels, and it's fairly simple to transport things, even if they're too heavy for you to lift. Another meaning of dolly is "doll," as in a child's toy that looks like a little person: "Give your brother back his dolly!"

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dolly Dolly dollies dollied dollying

It’s telling that while Mr. Deakins takes pains to praise his longtime gaffer, key grip, dolly grip, best boy and more, he never bothers to define those roles for the lay reader.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 13, 2026

This means he ensures the director feels comfortable with the gaffer, the dolly grip, the key grip, so that there’s no one on set that feels like a stranger.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2025

Brook can be excused for his flying drop of Jamal at gully, but Shoaib Bashir’s miss of the same man at long leg was a dolly.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2024

“I put it on a dolly and poke holes in it and then pour hot water into it so the water goes onto the ice,” he said.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 20, 2024

Janina spoke to her dead dolly for hours, sometimes yelling or laughing.

From "Between Shades of Gray" by Ruta Sepetys

AI in its current form limits production quality, noted non-binary Filipina filmmaker Dolly Dulu.

From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026

“If walls could sing, this charming three-story mountain retreat would be belting out a country classic,” the description continues, noting that “nearly everything inside remains just as Dolly left it.”

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026

His instincts paid off again, when Houston released her cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You.

From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026

Who knows about slogging over a 9-to-5 better than Dolly Parton?

From Salon ● Jun. 15, 2026

“That’s Dolly. Dolly Elias. Her brother Ignazio was the captain last year.”

From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor

A very soft dismissal too, as he dollies up a return catch to Colin Ingram's part-time leg-spin.

From BBC ● Apr. 7, 2024

Actual chefs and restaurateurs shop here, wheeling around their selections on big dollies.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 31, 2022

Those remarkably energetic, sometimes noirishly lit traveling shots were done with dollies, cranes and handheld cameras.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2022

The filmmaking favors the kinds of showy stylistic flourishes — slow motion dollies, split diopter shots — that, when used tastefully, can make action dazzle, as in the films of Brian De Palma.

From New York Times ● Jul. 14, 2021

The brothers get out of the van and unload dollies and empty boxes and packing tape.

From "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon

Liam Dawson was trapped plumb in front and Ryan Higgins dollied a catch to backward point as Spirit's batters tried and failed to get to grips with the top T20 wicket-taker of all time.

From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2025

Though it was also a thrill when you dollied in on films like the world’s top box-office hit of 2020, a title that had never made it through the walls of my particular media silo.

From Slate ● Jan. 1, 2021

Double was on hand Tuesday as the Möller was delivered from a Lithonia organ builder and dollied back to center stage.

From Washington Times ● Dec. 20, 2020

Then on the Serb’s serve in what he must have thought were the concluding moments of his work for the day, Djokovic dollied the most complacent of drop shots a tad long.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 5, 2015

Standard cinema technique is to use only one camera, which is dollied forward or backward for each different shot.

From Time Magazine Archive

The speech is executed in one take, with the camera dollying side to side as well as forward and backward, to capture all of Wright’s beats.

From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2023

The camera stays still for the most part, dollying in a bit now and again, panning with robotic precision to take in a vista.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2017

The camera is shaking, shifting, rolling, zooming, dollying, fragmenting his performance to the point where it's pulverized, like a mirror broken into a thousand tiny pieces and then crushed into powder.

From Salon ● Feb. 24, 2011

And some are quick visual puns, taking place in the corner of the frame or with the camera dollying past them, not seeming to care whether you catch them or not.

From Time Magazine Archive

In dollying it generally pays to burn the stone, as so much labour in crushing is thus saved.

From Getting Gold: a practical treatise for prospectors, miners and students by Johnson, J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Frances)