Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use sally in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Sally means a willow. Example: “Flocks of these birds stir up flying insects, which can then be picked off in quick sallies.”

Examples of sally by meaning

nounA sudden rushing forth.

  • Flocks of these birds stir up flying insects, which can then be picked off in quick sallies.

nounA witty statement or quip, usually at the expense of one's interlocutor.

  • Bull snuffed; he never paid any attention to her sallies but he heard them.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC
  • The stakes are low and the story beats are incidental amid the rush of largely mild visual gags and verbal sallies like “Blood Island!2012 April 26, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits”, in The Onion AV Club

verbTo make a sudden attack (e.g. on an enemy from a defended position).

  • The troops sallied in desperation.
  • A feeding strategy of some birds is to sally out from a perch to snatch an insect and then returning to the same or a different perch.

verbTo set out on an excursion; venture; depart (often followed by "forth").

  • From those airbases, MiGs sallied forth to attack the bombers striking North Korea.2007 September 30, Andrew Salmon, “Dogfights and daring in Korea's deep blue yonder”, in South China Morning Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived...

More sentences with sally

  • Sally wasn't the star of the show, so she was glad to be paid scale.From the entry scale
  • Sally was put in temporary charge of the department while they searched for a full-time replacement.From the entry temporary
  • Sally voted a split ticket for a Democrat and a Republican.From the entry split ticket
  • Sally went through most of her life events with her husband.From the entry life event
  • Sally looks pretty green—is she going to be sick?From the entry green
  • Sally is having a breakfast munch at her place!From the entry munch
  • Sally voted a straight ticket for her political party.From the entry straight ticket
  • Sally came first in the calligraphy competition.From the entry come first
  • “The prisoner will slide his bucket of shame over to the sally port.2021 September 2, Paul Simms, “The Prisoner” (4:45 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 3, episode 1, spoken by Colin…. From the entry sally port
  • Sally immediately finds her fellow Homestuckers and, with palpable relief, disappears.2020, Sandra Tsing Loh, The Mad Woman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem, unnumbered page. From the entry Homestucker
  • Sally unlocked her tiny cubicle and found herself feeling quite nostalgic.2014, Lynda Bellingham, chapter 2, in The Boy I Love, London: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN. From the entry nudge nudge wink wink
  • Sally was generous and open-hearted to the point of foolishness, but that was her experience.2011, Stella Duffy, chapter 10, in Singling Out The Couples, →ISBN. From the entry open-hearted
  • That apartment would be used as a sally port into the city when an offensive was mounted.1969, Mario Puzo, The Godfather, page 104. From the entry sally port
  • It is the facetious Gaelic sally of a person without Gaelic.1967 October 30, Myles na gCopaleen, “Language Please”, in The Irish Times, page 10. From the entry mahogany gaspipe
  • Sally said distressedly: "Oh, Mike, it's all true and I'm so sorry!"1953, Murray Leinster, Space Platform. From the entry distressedly
  • To sally forth to battle and win for our principles is something more than heroic.1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith, Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, →OL, page 40. From the entry heroic
  • Sally just swept along smiling at every one. . . .1913, Gene Stratton-Porter, chapter 7, in Laddie: A True Blue Story. From the entry come into one's own
  • It's a Houndsditcher!” The sally was greeted with laughter from all who heard it.1903, William Craig (of Invercargill, N.Z.), My Adventures on the Australian Goldfields (page 11). From the entry long ghost
  • Sally went on, smug with the knowledge of grown-up secrets.2010, Scott Nicholson, Kiss Me or Die. From the entry babymaker
  • Sally Field Award: Wet n Wild Beauty Benefits Beyond Nourishing with marine and soy proteins, panthenol and a daytime, no-drama appeal.2009 February 22, S.S. Fair, “Curl, Interrupted”, in New York Times. From the entry panthenol
  • Sally Doran sitting there upon her great big nellie bike.2009 March 20, “Sally Doran's Nellie Bike” (track 12), in The Mobile Phone, performed by Richie Kavanagh. From the entry nellie
  • Sally offered her mother a spoonful of apple mush.2007, Joy Dettman, Goose Girl. From the entry apple-mush
  • Sally: One time, I did a hundred jump ropes.2001, Matt Groening, “The Cyber House Rules”, in Futurama, season 3, episode 11. From the entry jump rope
  • Its name is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and it sallies forth on spumes of sputum each time an infected inmate coughs or sneezes.2001 January 15, David Bjerklie et al., “Your A to Z Guide to the Year in Medicine”, in Time. From the entry louse-ridden
  • Sally looked at him with her clear eyes.1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter CXXII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC. From the entry pleased as punch
  • Sally Bercow 41, told fellow Celebrity Big Brother housemate Amy Childs she had no plans to get vejazzled, then teased: "My life is spicy enough."2011 August 20, “Celebrity Big Brother 2011: 'Spicy' Sally Bercow's Sex Life Slip-Up”, in Daily Star, UK. From the entry vajazzle
  • Sally Healey's Portakabin door is open.2011, Rosamund Lupton, Afterwards, Hachette UK, →ISBN. From the entry Portakabin
  • Sally pulls him into a bedroom.2010 June, Clifton Evers, “Hooking Up”, in Notes for a Young Surfer, Melbourne, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, →ISBN, page 115. From the entry 'dom
  • Our suave President sallies forth with another joyously self-effacing witticism, putting Americans everywhere in mind of Bob Hope at his best or Jay Leno.2004 December, “Current Wisdom”, in The American Spectator, volume 37, number 100, Arlington, V.A.: The American Spectator, LLC, →ISSN…. From the entry misogelastic
  • Sally Taylor and friends did, and produced Grape Expeditions in France (Springfield Books, £5.95) an introduction to the “bicyclable wine regions of France”.1986, Punch, page 48, column 1. From the entry bicyclable
  • We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 10: Wandering Rocks]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey]…. From the entry blue o'clock
  • Sally looked just as if she had come into her own and was made for it; I never did see her look so pretty.1913, Gene Stratton-Porter, chapter 7, in Laddie: A True Blue Story. From the entry come into one's own
  • Sally and Lynn sat at the butcher block table in the kitchen and fixed tuna salad sandwiches with a cheese single and a pickle on wheat bread.2022, David Rachlin, Billy Backside and Other Stories. From the entry cheese single
  • You and I, we are not alone, and our screwdrivers are our flashing Excaliburs as we sally forth to make small parts of the fragmented world whole again.2017, James May, The Reassembler, Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 19. From the entry Excalibur

Meaning of sally

  1. noun A willow.
  2. noun Any tree that resembles a willow.
  3. noun An object made from the wood of a willow.

Full definition of sally

Questions about sally in a sentence

How do you use sally in a sentence?
Sally is used as a noun and verb. For example: “Flocks of these birds stir up flying insects, which can then be picked off in quick sallies.”
What is a short sentence with sally?
“The troops sallied in desperation.”
What does sally mean?
Sally means a willow.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sally (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use sally in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/sally. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.