adjective
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resembling or covered in scales
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peeling off in scales
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of scaly
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:
T. rex was still a scaly, egg-laying reptile, but its 36 C body temperature was much closer to that of a warm-blooded mammal than a modern reptile.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
Other creatures possess more mystical abilities, such as the scaly, deerlike qilin who can recognize whether a “person holds good or evil in their heart.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
In it, a government scientist discovers that a scaly creature worshiped by island villagers as a sea god has grown to a monstrosity that dwarfs tall buildings.
From Salon ● Mar. 20, 2026
It is characterised by severely dry, red, scaly, and inflamed skin that is highly susceptible to infection and skin cancer.
From BBC ● Mar. 11, 2025
She bent over, shivering, examining a trap, not liking the scaly look of the tails of the muskrats and yet not liking to see them caught in the traps.
From "Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Ann Petry
But Sunny and Ned are a bit scalier that your typical lifelong mates — they are shingleback lizards that live at Melbourne Museum in Australia.
From New York Times ● Oct. 24, 2022
In the midst there was a wonderful scalier or winding-stair, the entry whereof was without the house, in a vault or arch six fathom broad.
From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1 by Peter Anthony Motteux
If you were to let it have nothing to eat but mice and birds it might grow larger and fiercer, and scalier and tailier, and get wings and turn into the beginning of dragons.
From The Book of Dragons by H. Granville Fell
Anson, thinner and scalier and more snakelike than ever, was dealing a greasy, dirty deck of cards, his opponent being the square-shaped, black-visaged Moze.
From The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey
And for perhaps a minute there was one of the scaliest silences I've ever run up against.
From My Man Jeeves by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
For of all the scaly localities I have struck this seems to me the scaliest.
From Psmith, Journalist by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
The train of cars in which I was to trust my wallerable life, was the scaliest, rickytiest lookin lot of consarns that I ever saw on wheels afore.
From The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 2: War by Artemus Ward
They brought up the dirtiest, scaliest lookin' man in the guard-house, and said that was Si Klegg, and that he resembled me so much that they wuz sure he wuz my son.
From Si Klegg, Book 2 (of 6) Thru The Stone River Campaign And In Winter Quarters At Murfreesboro by John McElroy
She did not know that this Congo River was the home of the Crocodile, the biggest, fiercest, scaliest, hungriest Crocodile in all Africa.
From The Curious Book of Birds by E. Boyd (Elmer Boyd) Smith
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
