Put on a woolly jumper and turn down the thermostat.

Sporting a woolly cardigan with four buttons on top of an Oxford smock without a collar, our man has a faintly folksy look about him, calling to mind a zingaro or a gypsy, a carny or a Mongol, but also (switching to a wholly distinct mythology and iconography) a hippy strumming his guitar in a barroom in Haight-Ashbury or at Big Sur or in Katmandu.

There was nothing left in the fruit bowl but a brown banana and a couple of woolly pears.

My skin is black / My arms are long / My hair is woolly / My back is strong

That's the sort of woolly thinking that causes wars to start.

To call David Lean's Dr Zhivago a translation of Pasternak's novel is not only to disregard the specificity of film art, but to make such woolly use of the word ‘translation’ as to fit it to refer to any kind of transformation. Knitting included.

`I've got a rotten cold and I'm not taking my woollies off until it's better.'

Being an innocent Australian abroad in a European winter, I had taken with me every winter woolly I could borrow or squeeze out of friends and associates.

Woolly

Meaning

Adj

Noun

Origin

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Rhymes