oilyとは意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English oylei, equivalent to oil +‎ -y. Compare German ölig (“oily”), Swedish oljig (“oily”).

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈɔɪli/
• 韻: -ɔɪli

形容詞

oily (comparative oilier, superlative oiliest)

1. Relating to or resembling oil.
   • 1895 May 7, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 11”, in The Time Machine: An Invention, New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, OCLC 4701980:

     There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living.

2. Covered with or containing oil.
   • 1853, Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,”^[1]

     His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating-houses.

   • 1917, Robert Hichens, In the Wilderness, Chapter ,^[2]

     […] overdressed young men of enigmatic appearance, with oily thick hair, shifty eyes, and hands covered with cheap rings, swaggered about smoking cigarettes and talking in loud, ostentatious voices.

3. (figuratively) Excessively friendly or polite but insincere.
   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene i]:

     […] for I want that glib and oily art
     To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend,
     I’ll do’t before I speak […]

   • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, chapter 22, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, OCLC 145080417:

     Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfastness and patience at his work, as if he were waiting at a mouse’s hole.

   • 1914, Algernon Blackwood, “The Damned,”^[3]

     ‘He had an inflexible will beneath all that oily kindness which passed for spiritual […] ’

派生語

• oiliness
• smell of an oily rag