oily.
Covered with or containing oil.
Meaning & usage
Covered with or containing oil.
oily machinery; oily rags; oily fish; oily cooking
Resembling oil.
oily swells; oily seas
Excessively friendly or polite but insincere.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English oylei, equivalent to oil + -y. Compare German ölig (“oily”), Swedish oljig (“oily”).
A marble with an oily lustre.
Oilskins. (waterproof garment)
Where this word comes from
From Middle English oylei, equivalent to oil + -y. Compare German ölig (“oily”), Swedish oljig (“oily”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.