Word.ws English Dictionary

wurlies

wurlies is the plural of wurlie.

wurlies is the plural of wurly.

Meaning of wurlie

Adjective

wurlie (comparative wurlier or more wurlie, superlative wurliest or most wurlie)

  1. (Scotland) gnarled, knotted; wizened, wrinkled.
    • Wurlie, […] 2. Rough, knotted; as, "a wurlie rung," a knotted stick, S. It is applied to a stick that is distorted, Lanarks. As this sense, however, is considerably remote from the other, the term may have had a different origin. 3. Wrinkled, applied to a person; as, a wurly body, Lanarks.[1825, John Jamieson, “Wurlie”, in Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language: […], volume II (K–Z) (in Scots), Edinburgh: […] University Press; for W[illiam] & C[harles]...

Meaning of wurly

Adjective

wurly (comparative wurlier or more wurly, superlative wurliest or most wurly)

  1. (Scotland, Northern England (Yorkshire)) Of an object: derisorily small, tiny; of a person: puny, stunted.
    • Wurlie, 1. Contemptibly puny, or small in size; as "a wurlie bodie," an ill-grown person, Fife, Loth.[1825, John Jamieson, “Wurlie”, in Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language: […], volume II (K–Z) (in Scots), Edinburgh: […] University Press; for W[illiam] & C[harles]...
    Synonyms:
    dinky
  2. (Scotland) gnarled, knotted; wizened, wrinkled.
    • Wurlie, […] 2. Rough, knotted; as, "a wurlie rung," a knotted stick, S. It is applied to a stick that is distorted, Lanarks. As this sense, however, is considerably remote from the other, the term may have had a different origin. 3. Wrinkled, applied to a person; as, a wurly body, Lanarks.[1825, John Jamieson, “Wurlie”, in Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language: […], volume II (K–Z), Edinburgh: […] University Press; for W[illiam] & C[harles] Tait, […]...

Questions about wurlies

What is wurlies the plural of?
Wurlies is the plural of wurlie.

Words near wurlies in the dictionary

  1. Wurih
  2. wurley
  3. wurleys
  4. wurlie
  5. wurlier
  6. wurlies
  7. wurliest
  8. Wurlitzer
  9. Wurlitzers
  10. wurly
  11. wurmal

Source and license

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