bally, a. and adv. slang.
(ˈbælɪ)
A euphemism for bloody (see bloody a. 10), used as a vague intensive of general application; ‘jolly’, ‘confounded’. Cf. absoballylutely (s.v. absolutely adv.).
| [1847 Thackeray in Fraser's Mag. Jan. 126/2 Ha! What have we here? M. A. Titmarsh's Christmas-Book—Mrs. Perkins's Ball. Dedicated to the Mulligan of Ballymulligan. Ballymulligan! Ballyfiddlestick!] 1885 Sporting Times 11 Apr. 1/4 Too bad, too bad! after getting fourteen days or forty bob, the bally rag don't even mention it. Ibid. 3/4 Has that bally Ptolemy won, d'ye know? 1887 S. Butler in H. F. Jones Memoir (1919) II. xxvi. 54 No one in those days gave him or herself any bally airs about it. 1898 Steevens With Kitchener to Khartum 112 I've been in this bally country five years. 1919 C. Orr Glorious Thing v. 56, I..talked gaily about the bally old war. 1922 H. Walpole Cathedral I. vi. 103 All the time behind you and them some force was insisting on places being taken, connections being formed. One was simply a bally pawn..a bally pawn. 1939 G. B. Shaw Geneva iv. 54 The staggering, paralyzing, jolly bally breath-bereaving point..is that the dictators have been summoned. |