Word.ws English Dictionary

bairnly

bairnly adjective: bairnlike; childish.

Adjective

bairnly (comparative more bairnly, superlative most bairnly)

  1. (Scotland, rare) Bairnlike; childish.
    • Woman thour't but a bairnlie playke, / Wi' nought but beauty's blossom; / But, thour't a flow'r of heavenly pow'r, / Wi' pity in thy bosom:1813, Allan Cunningham, “The Rosie Cheek”, in Songs: Chiefly in the Rural Language of Scotland, verse 3, page 50
    • Andrew examined the wounded part, and declared it was just a flea bite. "It's a wee red," said he, "and before half an hour's bye ye'll ne'er fin't. Man, Charlie, it's bairnly to make sic a wark for a bit tig on the haffet […]"1822, John Galt, chapter 5, in Sir Andrew Wylie, of That Ilk, volume 1, page 36
    Synonyms:
    infantile, puerile

Synonyms of bairnly

Forms of bairnly

comparativemore bairnly
superlativemost bairnly

Origin of bairnly

From bairn + -ly.

Questions about bairnly

What does bairnly mean?
Bairnly means bairnlike; childish.
What part of speech is bairnly?
Bairnly is an adjective.

Words near bairnly in the dictionary

  1. bairning
  2. bairnish
  3. bairnless
  4. bairnliest
  5. bairnlike
  6. bairnly
  7. bairns
  8. Bairnsdale
  9. Bairnsdalian
  10. bairnwort
  11. Bairs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bairnly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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