Thesaurus.com
Dictionary.com
Definitions

scaly

[skey-lee] / ˈskeɪ li /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

When he came home with the monster catfish on Sunday, Prieto said she heard her mother-in-law’s exclaiming, “He caught a big fish,” before she laid eyes on the scaly creature.

From Los Angeles Times Aug. 1, 2026

Other creatures possess more mystical abilities, such as the scaly, deerlike qilin who can recognize whether a “person holds good or evil in their heart.”

From The Wall Street Journal Apr. 16, 2026

In it, a government scientist discovers that a scaly creature worshiped by island villagers as a sea god has grown to a monstrosity that dwarfs tall buildings.

From Salon Mar. 20, 2026

It was not clear whether the scaly hotel gatecrasher was a saltwater crocodile or its less dangerous freshwater cousin.

From Barron's Oct. 31, 2025

Flying Priest bombarded demons with holy water that ate holes in their scaly hides.

From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

But Sunny and Ned are a bit scalier that your typical lifelong mates — they are shingleback lizards that live at Melbourne Museum in Australia.

From New York Times Oct. 24, 2022

If you were to let it have nothing to eat but mice and birds it might grow larger and fiercer, and scalier and tailier, and get wings and turn into the beginning of dragons.

From The Book of Dragons by H. Granville Fell

In the midst there was a wonderful scalier or winding-stair, the entry whereof was without the house, in a vault or arch six fathom broad.

From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1 by Peter Anthony Motteux

Anson, thinner and scalier and more snakelike than ever, was dealing a greasy, dirty deck of cards, his opponent being the square-shaped, black-visaged Moze.

From The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey

They brought up the dirtiest, scaliest lookin' man in the guard-house, and said that was Si Klegg, and that he resembled me so much that they wuz sure he wuz my son.

From Si Klegg, Book 2 (of 6) Thru The Stone River Campaign And In Winter Quarters At Murfreesboro by John McElroy

She did not know that this Congo River was the home of the Crocodile, the biggest, fiercest, scaliest, hungriest Crocodile in all Africa.

From The Curious Book of Birds by E. Boyd (Elmer Boyd) Smith

The train of cars in which I was to trust my wallerable life, was the scaliest, rickytiest lookin lot of consarns that I ever saw on wheels afore.

From The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 2: War by Artemus Ward

For of all the scaly localities I have struck this seems to me the scaliest.

From Psmith, Journalist by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

And for perhaps a minute there was one of the scaliest silences I've ever run up against.

From My Man Jeeves by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse




Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 12,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training