roly-poly
Americanadjective
noun
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roly-polies
plural
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a roly-poly person or thing.
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Chiefly British. a sheet of biscuit dough spread with jam, fruit, or the like, rolled up and steamed or baked.
adjective
noun
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a strip of suet pastry spread with jam, fruit, or a savoury mixture, rolled up, and baked or steamed as a pudding
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a plump, buxom, or rotund person
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an informal name for tumbleweed
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of roly-poly
1595–1605; earlier rowle powle, rowly-powly worthless fellow, game involving rolling balls, rhyming compound based on roll (v.); for second element cf. poll 1
Explanation
Someone who's roly-poly is small and round. Your fat little Corgi puppy is extra adorable because she's so roly-poly. A chubby baby, with dimpled elbows and fat little legs, could be described as roly-poly. When you use this word as a noun for a plump person, it's especially derogatory, but the baby bears at the zoo won't mind being called roly-polies. When someone talks about a roly-poly bug, they mean a pill millipede or a woodlouse, a small insect that can protectively roll itself into a ball.
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:
In June, during Russia’s annual flagship economic forum in St. Petersburg, A7’s stand featured a giant roly-poly toy with the company’s logo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 8, 2026
As generations of Russian children know, the roly-poly 'nevalyashka' wobbles a lot, but never falls down.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
One subplot involves a second “Okja” spin-off, a roly-poly baby-mammal thing who we’re meant to find adorable simply because it’s there.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2025
David Byrne applies his quizzical-observer perspective in “The Fat Man’s Comin’,” a brief, brawny and elaborately arranged chamber-pop bolero about “a roly-poly man in the dark, he’s riding.”
From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2022
Odder still is the fact that its teddy bear arms are wrapped tightly around a roly-poly furball who squirms and makes noises—announcing to the world that he isn’t stuffed with fluff.
From "Camp Panda" by Catherine Thimmesh
The couple performed their Saturday night jive to Wilson Pickett's Land of 1000 Dances, making the studio audience cheer with excitement after executing a series of roly-polies.
From BBC ● Nov. 13, 2022
“When I was really small we’d get ants and roly-polies and make enclosures.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2022
Among the consumables: beaver bone soup, moose bone marrow, woodcock hung until it reached the desired “hallucinogenic point of decay,” caribou haunch, eels with sour-grass sauce, roly-polies and pandowdies.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2016
That night Stanton made two roly-polies of the blueberries we picked in the afternoon, boiling them in specimen bags, and we used the last of our sugar for sauce.
From The Long Labrador Trail by Dillon Wallace
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.
