Word.ws English Dictionary

soily

/sɔɪ.li/

soily adjective: covered in soil; earthy.

Adjective

soily (comparative soilier, superlative soiliest)

  1. Covered in soil; earthy.
    • Bellmark put the soily tin down on Elsie's best table-cover without eliciting a word of reproach, grasped it firmly with his left hand, and worked the opener round the top.1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados
    • A woman with a well-to-do south voice told me to wash my soily hands before touching her messages.1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage, published 2015, page 9
  2. Resembling or characteristic of soil.
  3. Dirty; soiled.
    • Methinks, Miſs, ſaid Sally, you are a little ſoily, to what we have ſeen you.1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter CCCXXXIII”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume VI, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by John Osborn, […], →OCLC, page 151
  4. (obsolete) Apt to stain.

Forms of soily

comparativesoilier
superlativesoiliest

Origin of soily

From soil + -y.

Words formed from soily

Questions about soily

What does soily mean?
Soily means covered in soil; earthy.
What part of speech is soily?
Soily is an adjective.
How do you pronounce soily?
Soily is pronounced /sɔɪ.li/.

Words near soily in the dictionary

  1. soilscape
  2. soilscapes
  3. soilsome
  4. soilure
  5. soilures
  6. soily
  7. Soini
  8. soiree
  9. soirees
  10. soirée
  11. soirées

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soily (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-soily.wav.

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