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Wry   /raɪ/   Listen
adjective
Wry  adj.  (compar. wryer or wrier; superl. wryest or wriest)  
1.
Turned to one side; twisted; distorted; as, a wry mouth.
2.
Hence, deviating from the right direction; misdirected; out of place; as, wry words. "Not according to the wry rigor of our neighbors, who never take up an old idea without some extravagance in its application."
3.
Wrested; perverted. "He... puts a wry sense upon Protestant writers."
Wry face, a distortion of the countenance indicating impatience, disgust, or discomfort; a grimace.


verb
Wry  v. t.  To cover. (Obs.) "Wrie you in that mantle."


Wry  v. t.  (past & past part. wried; pres. part. wrying)  To twist; to distort; to writhe; to wrest; to vex. "Guests by hundreds, not one caring If the dear host's neck were wried."


Wry  v. i.  
1.
To twist; to writhe; to bend or wind.
2.
To deviate from the right way; to go away or astray; to turn side; to swerve. "This Phebus gan awayward for to wryen." "How many Must murder wives much better than themselves For wrying but a little!"





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Wry" Quotes from Famous Books



... give yourself a brush up, and she's yours. (Taking up COX'S glass of water which he has left on table) I wish myself every possible success! To my future happiness! (drinks.) Ugh! (suddenly makes fearfully wry faces. The ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... up in the boat, with his arms folded, and his nor'wester pulled over his eyes, to ward off the drenching rain. "Nothin' would come amiss to me now, in the way of prog. I could digest a bit of the shark that swallowed Jonah, or pick a rib of the old prophet himself, without making a wry face." ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... be in trouble," Kaiser observed dryly. And on that uncomplimentary comment King Karl slept, his face drawn into a wry smile. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... underbrush hid him from the road. For drowsy hours he had looked through his tangled lattice upon the life that went up and down the highway, himself unseen,—a pedler, bent under the weight of the pack upon his shoulders, making wry faces at his blistered feet; a farmer, mounted on his clumsy two-wheeled cart, returning from the markets of Londinium; a chariot, gay with paint and gilding, with two young nobles arguing over the races at Uriconium; and between ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... not so bad as that—elderly. This will stagger you; but I assure you that until the other day I jogged along thinking of myself as on the whole still one of the juveniles.' He makes a wry face. 'I crossed the bridge, Roger, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie


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