Dictionary

sprinkly en · ADJ

Etymology

From sprinkle + -y.

Meanings

1. (of precipitation) Light, tending to sprinkle or fall down softly.
   • The rain had tapered off to a sprinkly drizzle, Portland's most prevalent weather condition. 2007, Bill Cameron, Lost Dog:
2. Characterised by sprinkles or sprinkling.
   • Humbert's first epiphanic vision of Lolita, for example, is rendered in aquatic, dripping, sprinkly slow motion. 2007, Barton Palmer, Twentieth Century American Fiction on Screen:
3. Subject to being sprinkled on.
   • I had rather a sprinkly seat in the bow, but, as we bobbed up and down, I had a good backward look at the town, which, with the ascent of mud in the foreground, looked almost set on a hill. 1851, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Hurry-Graphs Or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, Taken from Life:
4. Haphazardly and incompletely distributed.
   • Mary Richmond, general secretary of the Baltimore Organization Society, was disturbed because "under the name of settlement, the old-fashioned mission, distributing a cheap and sprinkly sort of charity, can do more harm than under the right name." 1967, Allen Freeman Davis, Spearheads for reform: the social settlements and the progressive movement:
5. Resembling having been sprinkled with something.
   • I have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily--until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe none at all. 1912, Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs:
6. Resembling sprinkles.
   • Christmas cookies and lemonade I made it safe and sound to my godmother's house in time to frost cookies and dip them in those little sprinkly things... 2006, Barbara Kelly, Moose Mug at High Noon:
   • When they are cool, ice them in pretty pastel colours and decorate with interesting sprinkly things. These might include hundreds-and-thousands, sugar flowers, the tops of iced gems (bite the biscuit off first), crystallised violets... 2005, Catherine Fox, Bridget Gillespie, Extreme Anglicanism: A Liturgical Guide to the Sporting Year:

Forms