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say it: OY-lee
oily is an adjective meaning "containing an unusual amount of grease or oil". It is pronounced /ˈɔɪli/ — OY-lee. It carries 4 recorded senses.
containing an unusual amount of grease or oil
“greasy hamburgers”
“oily fried potatoes”
“oleaginous seeds”
unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech
“buttery praise”
“gave him a fulsome introduction”
“an oily sycophantic press agent”
“oleaginous hypocrisy”
“smarmy self-importance”
“the unctuous Uriah Heep”
“soapy compliments”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for oily come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.