bally en · ADJ · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- /ˈbæli/
- (Southern-England) audio
Etymology
Alteration of bloody.
Meanings
-
(UK, dated, euphemistic, not-comparable) Bloody (used as a mild intensifier).
However, be that as it may and whether you liked the bally thing or didn't, the point was that it had vanished [...] It amazed me that I could have allowed myself to be let in for a binge of this description simply because a woman wished it. Too bally chivalrous for our own good, we Woosters, and always have been. [...] “When you hear me burst into song, you'll know there's peril afoot and you'll have plenty of time to nip out of the window.” “And break my bally neck?” [...] “Nothing can possibly go wrong.” “Just as you say, sir. But I still have that feeling.” The blood of the Woosters is hot, and I was about to tell him in set terms what I thought of his bally feeling, when I suddenly spotted what it was that was making him crab the act.
1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “VII, VIII, AND XV”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:“Bunny has a bad heart.” She glanced toward the corpse in the hallway. “The bally fool... the stupid, bally fool.
1984, Armistead Maupin, Babycakes, page 134:“I dislike to frighten the ladies, sir,” he said, “but she can’t float a dozen minutes, in my opinion. There’s a hole in her you could drive a bally cow through, sir.”
1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 115:“My faith! It’ll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this journey.”
1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 145:He's just a bally idiot.