Word.ws English Dictionary

snelly

/ˈsnɛli/

snelly adverb: quickly; sharply; acutely; coldly.

Adverb

snelly (comparative more snelly, superlative most snelly)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) quickly; sharply; acutely; coldly
    • The snaw drives snelly through the dale.1811, Charles Gray, The Minstrel
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) sharply; severely; tartly; curtly

Forms of snelly

comparativemore snelly
superlativemost snelly

Origin of snelly

From Middle English snelly, snellych, snellik, snellich, from Old English snellīċe (“rapidly, quickly, with activity”), from snellīċ (“moving quickly; swift”), equivalent to snell + -ly.

Questions about snelly

What does snelly mean?
Snelly means quickly; sharply; acutely; coldly.
What part of speech is snelly?
Snelly is an adverb.
How do you pronounce snelly?
Snelly is pronounced /ˈsnɛli/.

Words near snelly in the dictionary

  1. snelling
  2. Snellings
  3. snells
  4. Snellville
  5. Snellvilles
  6. snelly
  7. Snelson
  8. Snelsons
  9. sneng
  10. snep
  11. snepling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snelly (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “snelly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/snelly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.