Word.ws English Dictionary

wilily

wilily adverb: in a wily manner.

Adverb

wilily (comparative more wilily, superlative most wilily)

  1. In a wily manner.
    • And as wililye as thoſe ſhrewes that beguyle hym haue holpe hym to inuolue and intryke the matter: I ſhall vſe ſo playn and open a way therin, that euery man ſhall well ſee the trouth.1533 (date written), Thomas More, “The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance […]. Chapter XVIJ.”, in Wyllyam Rastell [i.e., William Rastell], editor, The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, […], London: […]...
    • They did worke wilily, and went and made as if they had beene embaſſadours, and tooke old ſackes vpon their aſſes, and wine-bottels, old, and rent, and bound vp, […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 9:4

Forms of wilily

comparativemore wilily
superlativemost wilily

Origin of wilily

From wily + -ly.

Questions about wilily

What does wilily mean?
Wilily means in a wily manner.
What part of speech is wilily?
Wilily is an adverb.

Words near wilily in the dictionary

  1. Wilhoites
  2. Wilhoits
  3. wilier
  4. wiliest
  5. Wiliideh
  6. wilily
  7. wiliness
  8. wilinesses
  9. wiling
  10. wiling out
  11. wiliwili

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wilily (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: “wilily.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wilily. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.