leery
/ˈlɪəri
/adjective (leerier, leeriest) informal
Cautious or wary due to realistic suspicions: a city leery of gang violence...
- The market turmoil and lack of good financial knowledge has made them leery of equities.
- Businesses were a little leery, understandably, about investing and adding jobs.
- I was a little bit wary or a little bit leery because he had to pick the gun up and put it in the bag, so of course I was watching what he was doing.
Derivatives
leeriness
- I share Davies' leeriness with regard to management consultants.
- Phoenix and New Hampshire prosecutors have, at least, overcome their leeriness at even charging bishops or cardinals.
- Also implied here is an understandable leeriness on Bartov's part of the possibility that such art draws on the power of the Holocaust merely to energize itself and its forms.
Origin
Late 17th century: from obsolete leer 'looking askance', from leer1 + -y1.
Rhymes
- trophy decoration
- trophy flag
- trophy hunter
- trophy hunting
- trophyless
- trophy lock
- trophy money
- trophy race
- trophy tax
- trophy wife
- tropic
- -tropic
- tropic acid
- tropical
- tropical cyclone
- tropical depression
- tropical forest
- tropical fruit
- Tropicalia
- tropicalise
- tropical island
- tropicalism
- tropicalismo
- tropicalist
- tropicalista