Adjective: wry
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | wrier; wryer |
| Superlative | wriest; wryest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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'"Why, you snivelling, wry-faced, puny villain," gasped old Lobbs. [1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 17, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:]
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“Humph! Had to,” said Pep with a wry grimace. [1913, Victor Appleton, “chapter 11”, in The Motion Picture Chums at Seaside Park:]
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"[T]he master says a wry word now and then; and so ye let your spirits go down, don't ye see, and all sorts o' fancies comes into your head." [1871, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, “chapter 6”, in The Haunted Baronet:]
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Catherine hath made a wry stitch in her broidery, when she was thinking of something else than her work. [1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XXXIV, in The Abbot. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 218:]
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. . . the wry rigour of our neighbours, who never take up an old idea without some extravagance in its application. [1876, Walter Savage Landor, The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor, volume IV, Imaginary Conversations, Third Series: Dialogues of Literary Men, ch. 6—Milton and Andrew Marvel, page 155 (Google preview)]
Etymology
From Middle English wrien, from Old English wrīġian (“to go, turn, twist, bend, strive, struggle, press forward, endeavor, venture”), from Proto-Germanic *wrigōną (“to wriggle”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyḱ- (“to turn, wrap, tie”), from *wer- (“to turn, bend”). Compare awry, wriggle.