burley

See also: Burley

English

Etymology 1

Unknown. Compare the personal name Burley.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɜː(ɹ)li/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)li
• Homophones: burly, Burley, Burleigh

Noun

burley (countable and uncountable, plural burleys)

1. (US) A tobacco grown mainly in Kentucky, used in making cigarettes. [from late 19th c.]
   • 1952, Glenn Leroy Johnson, Burley Tobacco Control Programs, page 59:

     The price received by farmers at the auctions for burley has decreased, other conditions being about average, around 1.45 cents for each 10-million-pound increase in the production of burley

2. (Australia) Blood and offal used by fishermen to attract fish.
   • 2018, Jacks Boric, “Fishing with Burley”, in Shimano Fishing Oceania‎^[1]:

     Fish will swim up your burley trail looking for the source which should be where your baits are placed, instead of dumping a heap of burley at once where the fish will feed on it quickly and move on.

Derived terms

• (tobacco): red burley, white burley

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
• Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1987-1996.

Etymology 2

Adjective

burley

1. Burlesque.
   • 2004 August 12, Vicki Gold Levi, Steven Heller, Times Square Style: Graphics from the Great White Way, Princeton Architectural Press, →ISBN:

     Burley shows came to Times Square after vaudeville started its decline, and took over many of the darkened old theaters. The Minsky family had become synonymous with burlesque beginning in its earliest days, was hugely profitable.

   • 2007, Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances in America, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 74:

     The Western Vaudeville Managers' Association (WVMA) and the Orpheum soon merged. [...] opined, "that the top all-around artist of today is Jim Barton, who was a burley comic, a skater, a storyteller, a dancer, a singer, […]"

   • 2018 June 13, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Hell's Cartographers, Courier Dover Publications, →ISBN, page 71:

     It can vary anywhere from burley (burlesque) to Phi Beta Kappa. […]

Further reading

• 1995 February 23, Irving Lewis Allen, The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech, Oxford University Press, →ISBN:

  The spelling of burlesque was Americanized by theater managers and columnists to burlesk and shortened to burley, much as vaudeville became vodvil and vaud(e). The humorously said and spelled burle(y)cue predates 1931; […]

Anagrams

• Bruley, uberly