Word.ws English Dictionary

burley

/ˈbɜː(ɹ)li/

burley noun: a tobacco grown mainly in Kentucky, used in making cigarettes.

Noun

burley (countable and uncountable, plural burleys)

  1. (US) A tobacco grown mainly in Kentucky, used in making cigarettes.
    • The price received by farmers at the auctions for burley has decreased, other conditions being about average, around 1.45 cents for each 10-million-pound increase in the production of burley1952, Glenn Leroy Johnson, Burley Tobacco Control Programs, page 59
  2. (Australia, New Zealand) Blood and offal used by fishermen to attract fish.
    • Fish will swim up your burley trail looking for the source which should be where your baits are placed, instead of dumping a heap of burley at once where the fish will feed on it quickly and move on.2018, Jacks Boric, “Fishing with Burley”, in Shimano Fishing Oceania
    Synonyms:
    chum

Adjective

burley

  1. Burlesque.
    • Burley shows came to Times Square after vaudeville started its decline, and took over many of the darkened old theaters. The Minsky family had become synonymous with burlesque beginning in its earliest days, was hugely profitable.2004 August 12, Vicki Gold Levi, Steven Heller, Times Square Style: Graphics from the Great White Way, Princeton Architectural Press, →ISBN
    • The Western Vaudeville Managers' Association (WVMA) and the Orpheum soon merged. [...] opined, "that the top all-around artist of today is Jim Barton, who was a burley comic, a skater, a storyteller, a dancer, a singer,[…]"2007, Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances in America, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 74

Proper noun capitalized: Burley

Burley

  1. A surname.
  2. A village and civil parish in New Forest district, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU2103).
  3. A small village and civil parish (without a council) in Rutland, England (OS grid ref SK8810).
  4. A suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England (OS grid ref SE2780).
  5. A civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire; see Burley in Wharfedale.
  6. A city, the county seat of Cassia County, Idaho, United States.
  7. A census-designated place in Kitsap County, Washington, United States.

Synonyms of burley

Forms of burley

pluralburleys
alternative formberley

Origin of burley

Unknown. Compare the personal name Burley.

From Old English burh (“burg”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”).

Words formed from burley

Words that rhyme with burley

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about burley

What does burley mean?
Burley means a tobacco grown mainly in Kentucky, used in making cigarettes.
What part of speech is burley?
Burley can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce burley?
Burley is pronounced /ˈbɜː(ɹ)li/.
What is the plural of burley?
The plural of burley is burleys.

Words near burley in the dictionary

  1. burletta
  2. burlettas
  3. burlette
  4. Burlew
  5. Burlews
  6. burley
  7. Burley in Wharfedale
  8. burleycue
  9. burleys
  10. burlicue
  11. burlier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burley (page history and authors); Burley (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-burley.wav.

Cite this entry: “burley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/burley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.