Word.ws English Dictionary

owliest

owliest is the superlative form of owly.

Meaning of owly

Adjective

owly (comparative owlier, superlative owliest)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of an owl.
    • In the picture Miss Elizabeth showed me the croc had little piggy eyes, not huge owly ones.2010, Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures, Dutton, published 2010, →ISBN, page 48
    Synonyms:
    owlish, owllike, strigine
  2. (Atlantic-Canada) In a bad mood; cranky.
    • I had no right to be owly and disagreeable with Willie.1988, Janette Oke, Winter Is Not Forever, Bethany House Publishers, published 2010, →ISBN, page 16
  3. Seeing poorly.
    • Perhaps nice isn't the best word for him, but he certainly was an unusually imposing and fluffy-haired and fierce-looking brute of a tarantula. He had rather an owly way about him, as if he had come out from his hole too early and was dazed and half-blinded by the light.1908, Vernon L. Kellogg, “The Vendetta”, in Insect Stories, Henry Holt and Company, page 55
  4. (Atlantic-Canada) Silly.

Questions about owliest

What is owliest the superlative form of?
Owliest is the superlative form of owly.

Words near owliest in the dictionary

  1. owlflies
  2. owlfly
  3. owlful
  4. Owlglass
  5. owlier
  6. owliest
  7. owliness
  8. owling
  9. owlings
  10. owlish
  11. owlishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: owliest (page history and authors); owly (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: “owliest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/owliest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.