owlishadj.

1596 A. Copley Fig for Fortune 4 Aduersitie..is..Disdaines obloquie, Helles ongate, an Owlish conuersation, All Ioyes deprife, and sorrowes invndation.

1613 S. Purchas Pilgrimage 2 Whose owlish eyes are dazled with the brightnesse of this light.

a1764 R. Lloyd Poet in Poet. Wks. (1774) II. 20 But eminence offends at once The owlish eye of critic dunce.

1843 T. Carlyle Past & Present ii. xvii. 178 Valiant Wisdom..escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and vulturish and many other forms of Folly.

1895 I. Zangwill Master iii. ii. 300 The little man with his most owlish air of wisdom.

1931 J. Buchan Blanket of Dark v. 91 Safety lies only in an owlish silence.

1993 National Enquirer (Sydney) 27 July 22/2 Herb Anderson played Dennis' owlish dad.

1846 Amer. Whig. Rev. Feb. 220/1 It would look like being owlishly oracular upon a ‘foregone conclusion’, to expatiate now..upon such an assertion.

1901 C. G. Harper Great North Road II. 40 Old gabled houses that..seem to nod owlishly to neighbours just as decrepit across the cobble-stoned path.

1994 Daily Tel. 9 Mar. 15/6 She's a comfortable woman with an owlishly motherly air.

1851 Littell's Living Age 8 Nov. 276/1 A pleasant, well-informed Yankee, familiar with the leading facts of geology..and with a tinge of bat-and-owlishness in his visage.]

1888 Boston Transcript 7 July 5/5 It is very interesting to see him appearing for once in the guise of the newspaper correspondent, whose ordinary owlishness he so effectively ridicules.

1996 Representations Autumn 77 A certain kind of charismatic, significant ‘owlishness’.