selly means rare; wonderful; admirable. It carries an Arena rating of 1778, earned across 193 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, selly ranks #467 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #906 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #1,289 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,677 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
selly is pronounced /ˈsɛli/.
Why “selly” is a great word
SELLY — [Adjective] Of a rare, wonderful, or admirable quality; strange and wondrous. From Middle English selly, from Old English sellīċ, seldlīċ ("rare, strange, wondrous"), from Proto-Germanic *seldalīkaz, equivalent to seld ("rare") + -ly ("-like"). Unlike "silly"—a cousin that collapsed from "blessed" into "foolish"—or "marvelous," which insists on unambiguous astonishment, "selly" dwells in an older, quieter stratum of awe. It is the gleam of a stray Saxon coin turned by the plow, the single, perfect apple on a blighted bough, or the inexplicable warmth from a stone worn smooth by centuries of tides—a quiet testament that the world's worth is often hidden in its rarest textures, a word for the artifact of happenstance that hints at an order we can no longer decipher.
Etymology
From Middle English selly, selly, sellich, from Old English sellīċ, seldlīċ (“rare, strange, wondrous”), from Proto-West Germanic *seldalīk, from Proto-Germanic *seldalīkaz, equivalent to seld + -ly. Cognate with Scots selly, silly (“approved, good, worthy”), Old Saxon seldlīk (“rare, wonderful”), Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌳𐌰𐌻𐌴𐌹𐌺𐍃 (sildaleiks, “wonderful”).
adj
- Rare; wonderful; admirable
adv
- Wonderfully, wondrously.e.g.“His brother was […] selly sick and sore unsound.” — 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “(please specify the chapter)”, in [Le Morte Darthur], (please specify the book number), [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; repub
noun
- A marvel; wonder; something wonderful or raree.g.“The line is a masterstroke of noncommitment, for the event is a "selly" in the sight of some unidentified readers.” — 1995, Robert J. Blanch, Julian N. Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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