mellowy

English

Etymology

From Middle English melowy, equivalent to mellow +‎ -y.

Adjective

mellowy (comparative more mellowy, superlative most mellowy)

1. Soft; unctuous; loamy.
   • 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 10 p. 159:

     Thy plumpe and swelling wombe, whose mellowy gleabe doth beare
     The yellow ripened sheafe, that bendeth with the eare.

   • 1812, Great Britain. Board of Agriculture, Agricultural Surveys: Banff, page 68:

     The first a dry mellowy soil, made up of a due mixture of clay and sand, very deep, and passes under the name of daichy haughs.

2. Mild; subdued; gentle; not at all harsh or sharp.
   • 1856 February 23, “Poetical Nuisances”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, page 328:

     Like a stream-wrestling lily of mellowy gold, What sweet parted lips, and what glozy blue eyes, Purple-steeped as the heartsease held up to the light!

   • 1887, R. M. Tate ·, Michael Malcolm, Or, Annals of a Sea-port Town, page 186:

     A little distance off was a grey and mossy cottage, the sight of which made Michael's heart leap, and called to his memory many reflections, pleasing, but mellowy sad.

   • 1968 August 5, “Philippine Trade Standared Specifications for Fish Sauce”, in Official Gazette, volume 64, number 32, page 8108:

     The fish sauce shall have a mellowy taste and should not be too salty.

   • 1829, T.C.O., “To S****”, in Ladies' Magazine and Literary Gazette, volume 2, page 35:

     The silver moon—the silver moon—how mellowy it gleams!

   • 1841, Jules Fournet, Clinical Researches on Auscultation of the Respiratory Organs and on the First Stage of Phthisis Pulmonalis, page 58:

     I have investigated with great care the alterations of the soft, free, mellowy character of the normal respiratory murmurs, in all the cases of auscultation I have met for some years, and I have learned to give to this class of signs more weight than is usually assigned to them.

   • 1928, Country Life - Volume 55, page 127:

     Get the fun of "playing" outdoors in the mellowy energising winter sunshine.

   mellowy light

3. Tender; emotional.
   • 2004, Charles Fleming, The Ivory Coast:

     Anita saw that look on him, that mellowy, kind of stupid look that some men get when they've been drinking.

   • 2016, Marilyn Pappano, A Summer to Remember:

     Not that he got all soft and mellowy around them, but he'd never met one he didn't like.

4. (of plants) Mature and soft; ripe.
   • 1769, John Ogilvie, Providence. Solitude. Paradise. An aeolian ode, page 29:

     Round its sides, A range of Gardens, gay as those which crown'd Thy work Semiramis, luxuriant waved With Autumn's mellowy growth;

   • 1839, Margaret Richardson, The Buds of Hope: A Collection of Miscellaneous Poems, page 48:

     Autumn's rich mellowy fruit bedecks the trees, Laid low, beneath a winter's stormy skies.

   • 1886 January 9, W. Ingram, “Fruit Garden: Amateur Pear Growers”, in The Garden, volume 29, page 22:

     The first named never becomes a mellowy Pear, even grown on a south wall here ;