doily
/ˈdɔɪli/
doily noun: a small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.
Noun
doily (plural doilies)
- A small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.
- She looked polite, and observed the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets of...1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC
- Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys / With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.1956, John Betjeman, “How to Get On in Society”, in Nancy Mitford, editor, Noblesse Oblige, page 159
- A similar circular piece of lace worn as a head-covering by some married Jewish women.
- An old kind of woollen material.
doily meaning in Tamil
doily in Tamil
- கம்பளித் துணி
Forms of doily
| plural | doilies |
|---|---|
| alternative form | doyley |
| alternative form | doiley |
Origin of doily
From Doiley, the name of a 17th-century London draper. The surname is Anglo-Norman, from d'Œuilly, name of several places in Calvados, from Old French oeil (“eye”).
Words formed from doily
Words that rhyme with doily
Questions about doily
- What does doily mean?
- Doily means a small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.
- What is doily in Tamil?
- Doily in Tamil is கம்பளித் துணி. See Doily meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is doily?
- Doily is a noun.
- How do you pronounce doily?
- Doily is pronounced /ˈdɔɪli/.
- What is the plural of doily?
- The plural of doily is doilies.
Words near doily in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: doily (page history and authors); doily (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: En-us-doily.oga.
Cite this entry: “doily.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doily. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.