Word.ws English Dictionary

Moll Kelley

Moll Kelley is the alternative form of Moll Kelly.

Meaning of Moll Kelly

Proper noun

Moll Kelly

  1. (obsolete) A fictional person used in swearing oaths, especially "By the powers of Moll Kelly", often in caricatures of the speech of uneducated Irish people.
    • Hubbuboo! by my soul, it is all true that I tell ye,
      I stood it myself, till the heart in my belly
      Flew up to my mouth, by the soul of Moll Kelly!
      And the thing sav'd my life was the drop of a dram.1795 "Planxty Ne-Boch-Lech" The New Lyric Repository (London: J. Osborne) pp.102–103

Questions about Moll Kelley

What is Moll Kelley the alternative form of?
Moll Kelley is the alternative form of Moll Kelly.

Words near Moll Kelley in the dictionary

  1. Molizon
  2. molka
  3. moll
  4. moll buzzer
  5. moll buzzers
  6. Moll Kelley
  7. Moll Kelly
  8. molla
  9. mollag
  10. mollags
  11. mollah

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Moll Kelley (page history and authors); Moll Kelly (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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Cite this entry: “Moll Kelley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/moll_kelley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.