peely-wally
/ˈpiːliwali/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Scotland/ˈpiliˌwali/
peely-wally adjective: pale, pasty; off-color or ill-looking.
Adjective
peely-wally (not comparable)
- Pale, pasty; off-color or ill-looking.
- ‘Are there no English troops out here?’ ‘A few,’ Gilzean said. ‘But they're all sick. Peely-wally lot the English, ye ken.’1984, William Boyd, An Ice Cream War
- But I felt that Tommy's championing of the lit de soleil, as it's known in Maryhill, was courageous and condign. It allowed otherwise peely wally Glaswegians to hold their tanned faces aloft in polite company and let their neighbours think they'd been to Santa Ponsa or Majorca.2011 July 3, Kevin McKenna, The Guardian
Forms of peely-wally
| alternative form | peelie wallie |
|---|
Origin of peely-wally
From Scots peely-wally.
Questions about peely-wally
- What does peely-wally mean?
- Peely-wally means pale, pasty; off-color or ill-looking.
- What part of speech is peely-wally?
- Peely-wally is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce peely-wally?
- Peely-wally is pronounced /ˈpiliˌwali/ (Scotland).
Words near peely-wally in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: peely-wally (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)-Vealhurl-pelly-wally.wav.
Cite this entry: “peely-wally.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peely-wally. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.