Word.ws English Dictionary

warby

warby adjective: unkempt, disreputable.

Adjective

warby (comparative warbier, superlative warbiest)

  1. (Australia, dated, derogatory, slang) Unkempt, disreputable.
    • 'Of all the warby ideas,' he said, and in the spite of the rain and the prospect of a wet camp, in spite of everything, he was smiling at her, 'the warbiest is you going on your own. I guess Jimmy and me can give you a lift down to Orion for the cherry-pickin'. What say, Jimmy?'1941, Kylie Tennant, The Battlers, Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, published 1994, →ISBN, page 260

Proper noun capitalized: Warby

Warby (plural Warbys)

  1. A surname from Old Norse.

Forms of warby

Adjective
comparativewarbier
superlativewarbiest
Proper noun
pluralWarbys

Origin of warby

Probably from warb + -y, although the former is attested a few years later.

Perhaps from Old Norse vǫrðr (“warden, watcher”) + býr (“farmstead”).

Questions about warby

What does warby mean?
Warby means unkempt, disreputable.
What part of speech is warby?
Warby can be an adjective or a proper noun.

Words near warby in the dictionary

  1. warburganal
  2. Warburn
  3. Warburton
  4. Warburtonian
  5. Warburtons
  6. warby
  7. Warbys
  8. warchalk
  9. warchalked
  10. warchalker
  11. warchalkers

Source and license

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