# vly

Pronunciation: say "VLY" /vlaɪ/

## Noun

1. A small swampy or marshy patch of land, especially one lying near a stream. *(dialectal, New York, US)*
   - Simple: A small piece of low, wet, muddy ground, often close to a stream.
   - _Frogs and herons gathered in the vly behind the old farm._
   - _Several vlies dotted the valley floor between the wooded hills._
2. Alternative form of vlei. *(dialectal, Southern Africa)* — Alternative form of vlei.
   - Simple: Another spelling of vlei. It means the same thing: a small marsh or wet patch of ground.
   - _Ducks paddled across the shallow vly at dawn._
   - _We pitched our tent on dry ground above the vly._

## 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").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/vly (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).