different between wanly vs wally

English

Etymology

wan +? -ly

Adverb

wanly (comparative more wanly, superlative most wanly)

1. In a wan or pale manner.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 48,^[1]

     She has the faded look of a St. James's Street illumination, as it may be seen of an early morning, when half the lamps are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they were about to vanish like ghosts before the dawn.

   • 1918, Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons, Chapter 7,^[2]

     Having turned about, he kept his horse to a walk, and at this gait the sleighbells tinkled but intermittently. Gleaming wanly through the whitish vapour that kept rising from the trotter’s body and flanks, they were like tiny fog-bells, and made the only sounds in a great winter silence.

   • 1988, Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, 1994, Chapter Five,

     […] [he] spent a lot of time wanly imagining how warm and secure marriage must make men feel […]

Anagrams

• Alwyn, lawny

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /w?li/
• Rhymes: -?li

Noun

wally (plural wallies)

1. (Britain, slang) a fool
2. (colloquial, London and Essex) a large pickled gherkin or cucumber

Verb

wally

1. (colloquial, obsolete, Essex) Alternative pronunciation (and hence spelling) of value
   • 1880, Sabine Baring-Gould, Mehalah: a story of the salt marshes

     Let them that wallys the sheep watch 'em.

Adjective

wally (not comparable)

1. (Of eyes) unusually pale; misaligned, sideways-looking, affected by strabismus.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter XI, p. 179, [1]

     […] one of his eyes was wally, a condition common among the natives of the land. (Here the first meaning is intended, as indicated later in the text:) […] turned his one black eye on the kindly man […] (p. 183)

   • 2007, www.urbandictionary.com, [2]

     You are freaking me out with your wally eye. One of your eyes is doing its own thing.

See also

• walleye

Anagrams

• lawly, yaw'll