vly
Pluralvlies
- 1A small swampy or marshy patch of land, especially one lying near a stream.
Like a marsh shrunk down to the size of a backyard, tucked beside a stream.
Frogs and herons gathered in the vly behind the old farm.
Several vlies dotted the valley floor between the wooded hills.
Note
A New York word that now survives mostly in place names, where it still marks low, wet ground. It comes from a dialectal form of Middle Dutch valeye, the word for "valley" in standard Dutch, so a word for a valley ended up naming the marsh in one. Vly is the usual spelling; vlaie and fly are rare. The plural is vlies.
- 2Alternative form of vlei.
Ducks paddled across the shallow vly at dawn.
We pitched our tent on dry ground above the vly.
Note
Here the spelling stands in for a Southern African word, vlei. It names a shallow wetland or small lake that often holds water only in some seasons, or the low ground where that water gathers. It looks like the New York marsh word and means much the same, but it comes from a separate origin. The setting tells you which one you are reading: an African landscape points to this word, and an American place name points to the other.
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Origin
Attested chiefly as "vly," it comes from a dialectal form of Middle Dutch "valeye," which meant "valley" in standard Dutch. A semantic shift to "swamp" occurred either in Middle Dutch or independently in the speech of the Dutch colonists of both America and South Africa (the latter producing "vlei").