Usage
What does ripply mean? Ripply is used to describe things that have ripples—small waves, ruffles, or wrinkles on a surface, such as water, fabric, clouds, or hair. A raindrop causes ripples in a puddle. A soft gust of wind can cause ripples on the surface of a lake, on the surface of a sheet hanging from a clothesline, or through the tall grasses in the meadow. Ripples aren’t typically breaks in the surface where they appear—they are disturbances that change its shape momentarily. The word can also be applied to waves or wrinkles involving intangible or abstract things, such as ripples of cause and effect, but ripply is typically used in the context of tangible things. Ripple can also refer to a cascading sound, like that of rippling water. Ripply is sometimes used to describe the sound of such water. Example: I love how the wind makes the surface of the lake ripply.
Etymology
Origin of ripply
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.
The copperplate lines are so exact they mimic the individual venation of feathers; the neck of a gyrfalcon takes on all the ripply realism of moiréd silk.
From New York Times • Nov. 3, 2023
Zevin, 45, with her penetrating gaze and her shock of ripply black hair, doesn’t look tired but oh, she is.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 29, 2023
In the Obama childhood snapshots I’ve seen, the waves look just right, Kailua-ish, frothier than at any of the ripply Honolulu beaches his mother and Gramps could have taken him to.
From New York Times • Sep. 2, 2011
In western Kansas, high-blowing sands blurred the sun and built ripply dunes along the east-west highways.
From Time Magazine Archive
Then he heard that ripply sound that raised the hair, that high thin scream from far away coming out of the mist unbodied and terrible, inhuman.
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
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.
