woolly

«woolly» in Mova's school dictionary: made of wool, or soft, thick and warm like wool: a woolly… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

adjective (woolly, woollier, woolliest); noun (a woolly, woollies — informal, a woollen jumper)

meaning for a pupil

1) Woolly means made of wool, or soft, thick and warm like wool: a woolly hat, woolly socks. tree →

2) A woolly animal has thick soft hair like wool: a woolly sheep, a woolly mammoth. tree →

3) Woolly ideas or thinking are not clear or exact; they are vague and muddled. tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life woolly hats, scarves and jumpers keep you warm in winter. In science lessons the woolly mammoth was an Ice Age animal with long thick hair to survive the cold; this shows adaptation. In writing and maths, «woolly» answers are vague — teachers want clear, exact ones. Phrases: «woolly hat», «woolly jumper», «woolly mammoth», «woolly thinking».

examples

• I wore my woolly hat and mittens to the snowy park. tree →
• Grandma knitted me woolly socks. tree →
• The woolly mammoth lived during the Ice Age. tree →
• The lamb had a soft, woolly coat. tree →
• Put on your woollies; it's freezing outside. tree →
• Your answer is a bit woolly — give an exact number. tree →
• The caterpillar looked fuzzy and woolly. tree →
• The sheep looked very woolly before shearing. tree →
• It looked like soft little woolly clouds! tree →

note

UK/Aus/NZ/Ireland spelling: woolly, woollen (two l's). US spelling often «wooly», «woolen». Not every woolly thing is wool; acrylic can look woolly. Some people are allergic to wool, and it can feel itchy.

In the corpora

• Woolly mammoths were mammals with fur that fed their babies milk; they lived until about 4,000 years ago and never met dinosaurs.
• He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate" ("inordinate" = far too much).
• Connor looks both up: a toque is a woolly hat, a double-double is coffee with two creams and two sugars.
• Some fossils keep soft parts: insects trapped in amber, and woolly mammoths frozen in Siberian ice.
• "shapka" means a woolly hat; "bez shapky", without a hat, worries grannies even in mild weather.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «woolly» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.