Word.ws English Dictionary

chefly

/ˈʃɛfli/

chefly adjective: pertaining to, similar to, or about chefs or cooks.

Adjective

chefly

  1. Pertaining to, similar to, or about chefs or cooks.
    • The best urban-rustic chefs, including Chez Panisse's Alice Waters, Zuni Cafe's Judy Rodgers and Campanile's Mark Peel, reinterpret the cuisine by using really good ingredients, putting them together with chefly skill and maintaining the spirit of each dish.1997 August, Jonathan Gold, “The Food that is Los Angeles”, in Los Angeles Magazine, volume 42, number 8, page 87
    • He roared, and a female souschef dashed over to scoop up the hat and pins and return him to his previous chefly glory.2007 August 7, Nancy Fairbanks, Bon Bon Voyage, page 54

Origin of chefly

From chef + -ly. Piecewise doublet of chiefly and headly.

Questions about chefly

What does chefly mean?
Chefly means pertaining to, similar to, or about chefs or cooks.
What part of speech is chefly?
Chefly is an adjective.
How do you pronounce chefly?
Chefly is pronounced /ˈʃɛfli/.

Words near chefly in the dictionary

  1. chefing
  2. chefless
  3. cheflike
  4. chefling
  5. cheflings
  6. chefly
  7. chefmanship
  8. chefnap
  9. chefnapped
  10. chefnapping
  11. chefnappings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chefly (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-chefly.wav.

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