Word.ws English Dictionary

colly

/ˈkɒli/US/ˈkɑli/

colly adjective: black as coal. Also the alternative spelling of collie.

Adjective

colly (comparative collier, superlative colliest)

  1. (UK, dialectal) Black as coal.
    • four colly birds1780, unknown author, Twelve Days of Christmas

Verb

colly (third-person singular simple present collies, present participle collying, simple past and past participle collied)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To make black, as with coal.
    • Thou hast not collied thy face enough, stinkard1601, Ben Jonson, Poetaster or The Arraignment: […], London: […] [R. Bradock] for M[atthew] L[ownes] […], published 1602, →OCLC, Act I, scene iv
    • Brief as the lighting in the collied night.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First...

Noun

colly (plural collies)

  1. (UK, dialectal) Soot.
    • besmeared with soot , colly1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC
  2. (UK, dialectal) A blackbird

Also used as

colly is also the alternative spelling of collie.

Forms of colly

Adjective
comparativecollier
superlativecolliest
Verb
third-person singular presentcollies
present participlecollying
past participlecollied
pastcollied
alternative formkelly
Noun
pluralcollies

Origin of colly

From Middle English coly, from Old English *coliġ, from Proto-West Germanic *kolig, equivalent to coal + -y. Doublet of coaly.

From Middle English *colien, variant of *colwen (attested in Middle English colwed and colwinge), from Old English *colgian. More at collow.

Words formed from colly

Phrases with colly

Questions about colly

What does colly mean?
Colly means black as coal.
What part of speech is colly?
Colly can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce colly?
Colly is pronounced /ˈkɒli/ (UK).

Words near colly in the dictionary

  1. colluviation
  2. colluviations
  3. colluvies
  4. colluvium
  5. colluviums
  6. colly
  7. Colly Blue
  8. collybioid
  9. collybist
  10. collybistin
  11. collybists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colly (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-colly.wav.

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