woolly
/ˈwʊli
/(US also wooly)
adjective (woollier, woolliest)
1Made of wool: a red woolly hat...
- The suspect is described as white, 5ft 11 in, of stocky build, and wearing a woolly hat, denim jacket, a white T-shirt and dark jeans.
- Leave the thermals at home, forget the woolly hat and the three pairs of socks, and instead, don stylish sunglasses and a shirt.
- He had a black woolly hat and wore a khaki jacket with red scarf and gloves.
Synonyms
woollen, made of wool, wool, fleecy
1.1(Of an animal, plant, or part) bearing or naturally covered with wool or hair resembling wool: woolly grey-green foliage the woolly aphid...
- Even a bear cuscus, a woolly marsupial found in Sulawesi's forests and normally a leaf-eater, won't turn down a succulent fig.
- Our textbooks were full of woolly mammals and cave men from the northern hemisphere but we knew very, very little of how the great Australian environment had responded to those events of the last Ice Age.
- Beneath us, the grass-covered, flat-roofed huts of Gujjar shepherds, the flocks of woolly sheep, the sturdy ponies and their handlers all headed to Kongdori.
Synonyms
fleecy, shaggy, hairy, fluffy;
wool-bearing
rare flocculent, laniferous, lanigerous
1.2Resembling wool in texture or appearance: woolly wisps of cloud...
- They look like huge slumbering monsters, wrapped in blankets of woolly cloud, their dark cheeks streaming with the tears of innumerable freshwater falls.
- Behind the coastline lies a bank of woolly cloud.
- The fungus grows rapidly and morphologically appears woolly or fluffy.
Synonyms
downy
technical floccose, lanate
2Vague or confused in expression or character: woolly thinking...
- Nice, our teachers told us, was vague, imprecise, woolly.
- It's startling, difficult and rewarding: sometimes knotty with reference and allusion, sometimes woolly and vague.
- The more detail that is demanded the better, because it will concentrate the minds of a group of people who tend to be hopelessly vague and woolly.
Synonyms
vague, ill-defined, hazy, unclear, unfocused, fuzzy, blurry, foggy, nebulous, imprecise, inexact, indefinite;
confused, muddled, muddle-headed, disorganized
2.1(Of a sound) indistinct or distorted: an opaque and woolly recording...
- The Sovtek has a wooly sound, with a pronounced lower midrange.
- And how disappointing that the wooly sound quality obscures a lot of the detail - following the bass part with the score was well nigh impossible.
noun (plural woollies) informal
1chiefly British A garment made of wool, especially a pullover.Bargain hunters snapped up everything from winter woollies to suits and evening wear....
- ‘You actually do need some woollies and a warm jacket,’ says Charlotte.
- When they considered we had collected enough we would swap our woollies for the potatoes.
2Australian /NZ A sheep.Pioneer historians were quick to notice that bighorn epidemics regularly followed the arrival of tame woollies....
- By the early 1900s, sheep were big business in Montana with 4.2 million of the woollies grazing the immense open ranges of the Big Sky Country.
Derivatives
woolliness
/ noun ...- You swipe your finger on this scanner, and software then tries to make up for your mental woolliness.
- In his books, journalism and pamphlets he likes to present himself as a serious counterweight to what he sees as the woolliness and scaremongering of environmentalists.
- ‘This man deserves the award for woolliness in his answers,’ countered Enda.
Rhymes
- appreciatingly
- appreciation
- appreciation dinner
- appreciative
- appreciatively
- appreciativeness
- appreciator
- appreciatorily
- appreciatory
- apprehend
- apprehended violence order
- apprehensible
- apprehension
- apprehensive
- apprehensively
- apprehensiveness
- apprentice
- apprenticeship
- appress
- apprise
- apprize
- appro
- approach
- approachability
- approachable