woolly
Americanadjective
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consisting of wool.
a woolly fleece.
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resembling wool in texture or appearance.
woolly hair.
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clothed or covered with wool or something resembling it.
a woolly caterpillar.
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Botany. covered with a pubescence of long, soft hairs resembling wool.
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like the rough, vigorous atmosphere of the early West in America.
wild and woolly.
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fuzzy; unclear; disorganized.
woolly thinking.
noun
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Western U.S. a wool-bearing animal; sheep.
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Usually woollies. a knitted undergarment of wool or other fiber.
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any woolen garment, as a sweater.
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Dialect. a dust ball.
adjective
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consisting of, resembling, or having the nature of wool
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covered or clothed in wool or something resembling it
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lacking clarity or substance
woolly thinking
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botany covered with long soft whitish hairs
woolly stems
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recalling the rough and lawless period of the early West of America (esp in the phrase wild and woolly )
noun
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(often plural) a garment, such as a sweater, made of wool or something similar
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(usually plural) an informal word for sheep
Regionalisms
See dust ball.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of woolly
Explanation
If something is woolly, it's covered in (or made of) soft, curly fur. Don't forget to wear your woolly hat — it's cold out there! You can use this adjective for anything made from wool, like your favorite woolly sweater or the woolly socks your grandma knits. It's also useful for things that look or feel like a sheep's woolly coat: "Look at those strange, woolly clouds!" "He shaved his woolly beard off!" Informally, it can be a great way to describe confusion or befuddlement, like the woolly thoughts that go through your mind when you're absolutely exhausted.
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:
True or, most likely, false, those woolly claims and epic tales of derring-do aren’t the weirdest thing about Marx.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
Gnawing, almost unbearable heartbreak acts as the catalyst for a layered analysis of the ways humans — or, in the case of “The Sheep Detectives,” humans and their woolly friends — ache to forget.
From Salon ● May 25, 2026
In “The Sheep Detectives,” the woolly ungulates themselves set about solving a heinous crime: gathering evidence, bringing it to light, and even drawing diagrams to point dimwitted humans in the right direction.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
Swapping her usual one-tone trouser suit for a woolly jumper with sparkles, Meloni fielded questions for an hour from the tattoo-covered rapper and his popular co-host.
From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2026
“Dad's coming home to eat. Put on a woolly hat or your head'll freeze.”
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
Vampyrum bats prey mostly on birds they find by smell, whereas the woollies swoop down on rodents they hear rustling on the forest floor.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 11, 2023
The shop sells Stonehenge woollies, T-shirts, snowdomes, fridge magnets and jewellery.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 8, 2019
Bassett – an actress who grows in every play – shoves her face between dire woollies like a feral hedgehog.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 11, 2012
Mrs. Groenewegen donned her woollies, put on a coat and overshoes.
From Time Magazine Archive
After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more "superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then going on to buy for her sons' wear.
From The Disturbing Charm by Ruck, Berta
Mr. Buck — who looks every bit the burl dealer, with his wool cap and even woollier beard — bought half a million pounds of redwood burls last year and is a presence on eBay.
From New York Times ● Apr. 9, 2014
By contrast, the BOA likes to speak of fourth in the medal table as an "aspiration", preferring instead to focus on the woollier goal of "more medals in more sports than for over a century".
From The Guardian ● Jun. 21, 2012
He often deploys the saxophones in a braided tandem, before giving each a chance to stretch out: Mr. Cheek with his streamlined logic, Mr. Malaby with his woollier line of attack.
From New York Times ● May 16, 2010
The hardest job for a painter in Paris is to be original; the next hardest job is to be wilder and woollier than one's associates.
From Time Magazine Archive
The scene of this thrilling anecdote is laid in the Far West, when it was much wilder and woollier than it is at present.
From Bert Wilson's Fadeaway Ball by Duffield, J. W.
And amid some of the woolliest spring weather in recent memory — drought, sleet, hard freezes, heat waves — my new native plantings are clambering out of the wood chips.
From New York Times ● May 26, 2010
At no event since the woolliest days of the Living Theater has the audience been such an integral part of the action.
From Time Magazine Archive
And he will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel.
From Time Magazine Archive
The woolliest: 6:45 every week night, when British youngsters gasp at the well-planned perils of Dick Barton, Special Agent, hero of BBC's only nonstop thriller.*
From Time Magazine Archive
They were, as a matter of fact, excellent stockings of the heaviest, woolliest kind, and Whitman had bought them a year and a half ago in Scotland, whither he had gone after his wife's death.
From Tutors' Lane by Lewis, W. S. (Wilmarth Sheldon)
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.
