Word.ws English Dictionary

wry

/ɹaɪ/

wry adjective: turned away, contorted (of the face or body).

Adjective

wry (comparative wrier or wryer, superlative wriest or wryest)

  1. Turned away, contorted (of the face or body).
    • '"Why, you snivelling, wry-faced, puny villain," gasped old Lobbs.1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 17, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC
    • “Humph! Had to,” said Pep with a wry grimace.1913, Victor Appleton, “chapter 11”, in The Motion Picture Chums at Seaside Park
  2. Dryly humorous; sardonic or ironic, usually in a way that suggests acknowledgement of a problem or difficult situation.
    • "[T]he master says a wry word now and then; and so ye let your spirits go down, don't ye see, and all sorts o' fancies comes into your head."1871, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, “chapter 6”, in The Haunted Baronet
    Synonyms:
    droll
  3. Twisted, bent, crooked.
  4. Deviating from the right direction; misdirected; out of place.
    • Catherine hath made a wry stitch in her broidery, when she was thinking of something else than her work.1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XXXIV, in The Abbot. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company...
    • . . . the wry rigour of our neighbours, who never take up an old idea without some extravagance in its application.1876, Walter Savage Landor, The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor, volume IV, Imaginary Conversations, Third Series: Dialogues of Literary Men, ch. 6—Milton and Andrew Marvel, page 155 (Google...

Verb (1)

wry (third-person singular simple present wries, present participle wrying, simple past and past participle wried)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To turn (away); to swerve or deviate.
    • God pricketh them of his great goodness still. And the grief of this great pang pincheth them at the heart, and of wickedness they wry away.1535, Thomas More, chapter 18, in Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation
    • You married ones,
      If each of you should take this course, how many
      Must murder wives much better than themselves
      For wrying but a little!1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To divert; to cause to turn away.
  3. (transitive) To twist or contort (the body, face, etc.).

Noun

wry

  1. (regional) Distortion.

Verb (2)

wry (third-person singular simple present wries, present participle wrying, simple past and past participle wried)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To cover; clothe; cover up; cloak; hide.

wry meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

wry in Urdu

بدشکلا, بگڑا, کج, خم دار, خراب, پیچ دار

wry in Bengali

বাঁকা

wry in Malayalam

satirical, ironic, sardonic
വക്രിച്ച, പരിഹാസമായ, പരിഹാസാത്മകമായ, പരിഹാസരൂപേണയുള്ള, കളിയാക്കിക്കൊണ്ടുളള, പുച്ഛിക്കുന്ന
unimpressed. displeased, annoyed, irritated
തൃപ്തിയില്ലാത്ത, മതിപ്പില്ലാത്ത, അതൃപ്ത, അനിർവൃത, അസന്തുഷ്ട, അസംതൃപ്ത
contorted, crooked, distorted
വികൃതമായ, തിരിഞ്ഞ, അതിവികൃത, വികൃത, വെെകൃത, ഒരുഭാഗം തിരിഞ്ഞ

wry in Kannada

ತಿರುಚಿದ, ಸೊಟ್ಟ, ವಕ್ರ

Examples of wry in a sentence

  • A wry laugh bubbled up Carmen's throat as she turned to Blanca.
  • I could almost hear the wry grins cracking their faces as the officers peacocked.
  • It's Leaky." One of the orderlies snickered and I shrugged with a wry smile.

All 20 example sentences with wry

Synonyms of wry

Forms of wry

Adjective
comparativewrier
comparativewryer
superlativewriest
superlativewryest
Verb
third-person singular presentwries
present participlewrying
past participlewried
pastwried

Origin of wry

From Middle English wrien, from Old English wrīġian (“to go, turn, twist, bend, strive, struggle, press forward, endeavor, venture”), from Proto-Germanic *wrigōną (“to wriggle”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyḱ- (“to turn, wrap, tie”), from *wer- (“to turn, bend”). Compare awry, wriggle.

From Middle English wryen, wrien, wreon, wrihen, from Old English wrēon (“to cover, clothe, envelop”), from Proto-West Germanic *wrīhan, from Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to wrap, cover”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyḱ- (“to turn, wrap, tie”), from *wer- (“to turn, bend”).

Words formed from wry

Words that rhyme with wry

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wry

What does wry mean?
Wry means turned away, contorted (of the face or body).
What is wry in Urdu?
Wry in Urdu is بدشکلا, بگڑا, کج. See Wry meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is wry?
Wry can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce wry?
Wry is pronounced /ɹaɪ/.

Words near wry in the dictionary

  1. wrung out
  2. wrung out one's sock
  3. wrungness
  4. WRVS
  5. WRX
  6. wry
  7. wry-billed plover
  8. wry-billed plovers
  9. wrybill
  10. wrybills
  11. Wrye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wry (page history and authors); wry (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wry (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wry (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); wry (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: en-au-wry.ogg.

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