A fielding position in cricket, the gully is situated in the 'gully' between the slips and point.

Originally called backward point, or occasionally short third man, the player in the gully stands in a crouched position during the bowlers run up, and should be on his toes when the batsman plays his shot, as most of the catches made at gully are the result of a thick edge which carries past the players in slip.

Gully is one of those slang words that keeps picking up and dropping meanings. It's going into overdrive at the moment, being used to mean pretty much anything good or extreme. Its latest incarnation first appeared in the early 1990s (as far as I can find), and gained sudden, unexplained popularity in 2000. It is most often used to mean:

Cool or fly.

Street or hardcore (gritty, tough, ghetto {in a good way})

Sexy

Keeping it real ("he's gully" equals "he's keeping it real").

One theory on the origin of this current usage is that it comes from the Street Fighter arcade game. One of the strongest characters in the game was Guile, which was mispronounced as Gully.


Older or less common meanings.

A shortening of hully-gully or holly-golly, a disturbance, ruckus, or racket. Also non-sense.

Gullyhole: vagina.

Gully-low: a jazz term meaning sensuous, insinuating music.

Gul"ly (?), n.; pl. Gulles (#). [Etymol. uncertain]

A large knife.

[Scot.]

Sir W. Scott.

 

© Webster 1913.


Gul"ly, n.; pl. Gullies (#). [Formerly gullet.]

1.

A channel or hollow worn in the earth by a current of water; a short deep portion of a torrent's bed when dry.

2.

A grooved iron rail or tram plate.

[Eng.]

Gully gut, a glutton. [Obs.] Chapman. -- Gully hole, the opening through which gutters discharge surface water.

 

© Webster 1913.


Gul"ly, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gullied (#); p. pr. & vb. n. Gullying.]

To wear into a gully or into gullies.

<-- = wear down, not wear as clothing! -->

 

© Webster 1913.


Gul"ly, v. i.

To flow noisily.

[Obs.]

Johnson.

 

© Webster 1913.

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