Word.ws English Dictionary

whiskery

whiskery adjective: having whiskers.

Adjective

whiskery (comparative more whiskery, superlative most whiskery)

  1. Having whiskers.
    • [T]he old lady is as ugly as any woman in the parish, and as tall and whiskery as a Grenadier.1846 February 28 – 1847 February 27, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “Snobs and Marriage”, in The Book of Snobs, London: Punch Office, […], published 1848, →OCLC, pages 129-130
    • "Don't you my-dear me," she sniffed. "I don't like you." / "Why?" / "Cos …" She ladled the punch carefully into the mugs and meditated. "Cos you chew tobacco. Cos you're whiskery. Wot I take to is smooth-faced young chaps."1902 October, Jack London, chapter XX, in A Daughter of the Snows, Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC, page 209
  2. Having protrusions resembling whiskers.
    • Smiling, he gave us a salute, turned his horse and rode down the trail, through the high hairy weeds and whiskery flowers thriving among the rocks and faded ruts of the road.1962, Edward Abbey, “Chapter 2”, in Fire on the Mountain, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, published 1978, page 73
    • The whiskery batfish (a kind of anglerfish) is covered with outgrowths of skin that resemble bits of seaweed.2005, Martha L Crump, Alan Crump, Headless males make great lovers
  3. Resembling whiskers.
    • […] all the white trees, tall like poles, that went up and up to where, right at the top, among whiskery branches, were bits of blue that were the sky.1929, Henry Handel Richardson, Ultima Thule, New York: Norton, Part One, Chapter 7, page 72
    • He nodded his head toward an ancient armchair spewing out its whiskery stuffing.1981, Wendy Simons, chapter 20, in Odd Woman Out, New York: St. Martin’s Press, page 184
  4. Involving or caused by whiskers.
    • He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss.1997 June 26, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter 1, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter; 1), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN
    • Despite my lightheadedness, I could feel everything. The shocking wetness of his mouth. The whiskery feel of his lips. His barging tongue.2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Picador, Book Three, “Flesh and Blood,” p. 373
  5. (UK, humorous) Old.
    • It is, of course, the most whiskery old cliché, but clichés usually have their basis in fact, and this one certainly does: Historically, the French have paid extraordinary—some would say excessive—attention to what they eat and how they eat it.2001, Peter Mayle, “The Inner Frenchman”, in French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew, New York: Knopf, page 8
    • I checked it out, and there were some good—if whiskery—stories.2009 January 14, Simon Hoggart, “Simon Hoggart’s Sketch: Short-selling sermons as God takes on Mammon”, in The Guardian

Noun

whiskery (plural whiskeries)

  1. (rare) A whiskey distillery.
    • […]where the house of God was hidden by whiskeries, wineries, and breweries that were built against it.1915 June 10, Parliamentary Debates, published 1917, page 3925
    • Even today, Devin’s story is told and retold in the local whiskeries and his critics secretly wish he would come swaggering back with another bombastic plan to enhance their wealth.1968, Bob Davis, The Dingle War, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., page 1

Examples of whiskery in a sentence

  • At a corner table two whiskery ranch hands were playing checkers.1966, Truman Capote, “Chapter 2”, in In Cold Blood, New York: Modern Library, published 1992, page 179:
  • I looked at Dr Grene and tried to imagine him altered by the moon, more whiskery, a werewolf possibly.2008, Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture, London: Faber & Faber, Part One, Chapter Eight, page 81:
  • At first, all he sees is a harmless-looking blob, a microscopic single-cell organism sporting a couple of whiskery flagella.2017 April 3, Stephanie Zacharek, “In Life, the blob from Mars is small and very scary”, in Time:

Synonyms of whiskery

Forms of whiskery

Adjective
comparativemore whiskery
superlativemost whiskery
Noun
pluralwhiskeries

Origin of whiskery

From whisker + -y.

From whiskey/whisky + -ery.

Questions about whiskery

What does whiskery mean?
Whiskery means having whiskers.
How do you use whiskery in a sentence?
At a corner table two whiskery ranch hands were playing checkers.
What part of speech is whiskery?
Whiskery can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near whiskery in the dictionary

  1. whiskerless
  2. whiskerlike
  3. whiskerpad
  4. whiskerpads
  5. whiskers
  6. whiskery
  7. whiskey
  8. whiskey butter
  9. whiskey dick
  10. whiskey dicks
  11. whiskey fungi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whiskery (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-whiskery.wav.

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