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View synonyms for scaly

scaly

[ skey-lee ]

adjective

, scal·i·er, scal·i·est.
  1. covered with or abounding in scales scale or scale.
  2. characterized by or consisting of scales; scale; scalelike.
  3. peeling or flaking off in scales. scale.
  4. Slang. shabby; despicable.


scaly

/ ˈskeɪlɪ /

adjective

  1. resembling or covered in scales
  2. peeling off in scales


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Derived Forms

  • ˈscaliness, noun

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Other Words From

  • scali·ness noun
  • un·scaly adjective

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Word History and Origins

Origin of scaly1

First recorded in 1520–30; scale 1 + -y 1

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Example Sentences

The frigid Irish sea seems to have kept these scaly invaders at bay, since no one has ever found serpentine fossils in the country.

However, a study published this month in Current Biology has begun to unravel some of these scaly critters’ secrets.

While lizards have dry, scaly skin, salamanders typically have to keep their skin moist, and some spend their entire lives in water.

From Vox

Owning anything furry, scaly or feathery has always seemed to me like a lot of work, a lot of noise and a lot of mess.

Since its founding in 2014, the rescue center has saved more than 1,300 pangolins and returned 60 percent of the scaly mammals to the wild.

Even bullets will fly off from any other part of the scaly covering as though they had struck against a stone wall.

Its scaly body wound about her boot, the flat head swaying from side to side, was a huge rattlesnake.

Some have, indeed, confounded the scaly lizards of the East Indies with the armadillos of America.

The tail was covered with hair for two or three inches from the beginning, and the rest of it with a smooth scaly skin to the end.

Indeed, you could as little get hold of Chopin as, to use L. Enault's expression, of the scaly back of a siren.

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scalpriformscaly anteater