From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Burly \Bur"ly\ (b[^u]r"l[y^]), adjective [OE. burlich strong, excellent; perh. orig. fit for a lady's bower, hence handsome, manly, stout. Cf. {Bower}.]
1. Having a large, strong, or gross body; stout; lusty; -- now used chiefly of human beings, but formerly of animals, in the sense of stately or beautiful, and of inanimate things that were huge and bulky. ''Burly sacks.'' --Drayton.
In his latter days, with overliberal diet, [he was] somewhat corpulent and burly. --Sir T. More.
Burly and big, and studious of his ease. --Cowper.
2. Coarse and rough; boisterous.
It was the orator's own burly way of nonsense. --Cowley.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
adjective
1: muscular and heavily built; "a beefy wrestler"; "had a tall burly frame"; "clothing sizes for husky boys"; "a strapping boy of eighteen"; "'buirdly' is a Scottish term" [syn: {beefy}, {husky}, {strapping}, {buirdly}] [also: {burliest}, {burlier}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
69 Moby Thesaurus words for "burly": able-bodied, adipose, athletic, beefy, big, big-bellied, bloated, blowzy, bosomy, brawny, broad-shouldered, buxom, chubby, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, fat, fattish, fleshy, full, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, hippy, husky, imposing, large, lusty, meaty, muscle-bound, muscular, obese, overweight, paunchy, plump, podgy, portly, potbellied, pudgy, puffy, pursy, roly-poly, rotund, rugged, sinewy, square, squat, squatty, stalwart, stocky, stout, strapping, strong, sturdy, swollen, thewy, thick-bodied, thickset, top-heavy, tough, tubby, well-built, well-fed, well-knit, well-set, well-set-up, wiry
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