Meaning

(usually of a man) Large, well-built, and muscular..

Definitions by Sense

1. (usually of a man) Large, well-built, and muscular.
2. (British, East End of London, slang) Great, amazing, unbelievable.
3. (US, slang, surf culture and/or Southern California) Of large magnitude, either good or bad, and sometimes both.
4. Full of burls or knots; knotty.

Example Sentences

He’s a big, burly rugby player who works as a landscape gardener.

With no great disparity between them in point of years, they were, in every other respect, as unlike and far removed from each other as two men could well be. The one was soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech.

She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had expected to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven, burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

Yossarian responded to the thought by slipping away stealthily from the police and almost tripped over the feet of a burly woman of forty hastening across the intersection guiltily, darting furtive, vindictive glances behind her toward a woman of eighty with thick, bandaged ankles doddering after her in a losing pursuit.

That goal was burly.

Kimi Räikkönen is a burly Formula 1 driver.

That wave was burly! (i.e. large, dangerous and difficult to ride)

This hike is going to be burly, but worth it because there is good body surfing at that beach.

Word Forms

• burlier
• burliest
• bowerly
• more burly
• most burly

Synonyms for burly

Related Words

When Should You Use Burly?

Use burly when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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