adjective
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resembling milk, esp in colour or cloudiness
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of or containing milk
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spiritless or spineless
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Judaism another word for milchik
Other Word Forms
- milkily adverb
- milkiness noun
Etymology
Origin of milky
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at milk, -y 1
Explanation
Anything milky looks like milk — it's whitish and cloudy. Soapy bathwater, pale skin, and the sap inside some plants can all be described as milky. You can use milky to talk about a friend's clear, light complexion, and you can also use it to describe something that has milk in it: "I like my tea sweet and milky." Sometimes you'll find this word describing something that's clouded, like an elderly dog's milky eyes. Our galaxy, in fact, is known as the Milky Way because its shining band of stars can't be individually seen without a telescope, so they appear cloudy or milky.
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.
A decade later, a couple of Italian landscapes similarly turn complex space into milky planes kept parallel to the surface of the canvas.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 3, 2026
The security guard reclaimed his chair, sipping on a milky bubble tea.
From Slate • Oct. 10, 2025
While we followed the police, we could see the boat – a thin black smudge on a milky sea – to our left.
From BBC • Jun. 17, 2025
It was, to say the least, stunning: the dish was shaped in a geometric pattern, with pristinely poached chicken, masterfully handled vegetables and a milky, creamy sauce with that familiar zing of ginger.
From Salon • May 30, 2025
I threw up what little I’d swallowed, and children around me jumped and receded into a tittery circle of faces with milky mustaches.
From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago
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.
