Word.ws English Dictionary

shily

shily is the archaic form of shyly.

Meaning of shyly

Adverb

shyly (comparative more shyly, superlative most shyly)

  1. In a shy manner.
    • The moon went slowly down in chastened loveliness; she departed like some sweet bride into her chamber, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars peeped shyly out.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

Forms of shily

comparativemore shily
superlativemost shily

Origin of shily

From shy + -ly.

Questions about shily

What is shily the archaic form of?
Shily is the archaic form of shyly.

Words near shily in the dictionary

  1. shilpad
  2. shilpads
  3. Shilpi
  4. Shilton
  5. Shilton and Barnacle
  6. shily
  7. shim
  8. Shim Sham
  9. Shim Shams
  10. shim-pua marriage
  11. shim-pua marriages

Source and license

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