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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

surly.

Irritated, bad-tempered, unfriendly.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈsɜːli/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝli/General-American
  1. Irritated, bad-tempered, unfriendly.

  2. Threatening, menacing, gloomy.

    The surly weather put us all in a bad mood.
  3. Lordly, arrogant, supercilious.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

16th-century alteration of sirly, from sir + -ly.

adv/ˈsɜːli/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝli/General-American
  1. In an arrogant or supercilious manner.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

16th-century alteration of sirly, from sir + -ly.

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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.