adjectiveadjective lairier, adjective lairiest
informal British1Cunning or conceited.
- ‘you think you know the lot—everything about you is lairy’
- ‘Like Lads - the real inheritors of the hippie legacy - Emin's bleary, blurry, beery, leery, lairy anti-sensualist sensibility is an advert for the vacuity of her own preferences.’
- ‘The hero of Ken Loach's new film is Liam, a lairy young lad a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday, caught with his friend Pinball selling contraband fags in a pub, without reference to HM customs and excise.’
- ‘Bringing a set of darts to an interview could be viewed as a warning to lairy journalists to mind their manners, but not with Meadows.’
- ‘‘Whenever your ready, Mr. Glendenning,’ writes Lisa Napoles in Chicago, who'd be better served learning how to use an apostrophe than trying to get smart and lairy with me.’
2Ostentatiously attractive; flashy.
- ‘there are some lairy details like the huge boot spoiler and white alloy wheels’
- ‘It wasn't dinner at The Ivy, it was very, very lairy.’
- ‘The contortionist woman was probably the most fun; lairy as hell with the best ‘orgasm face’ I've ever seen.’
- ‘His stark garage tunes - inflected by house and hip hop - celebrated late-night, low rent Britain in all its lairy glory.’
- ‘This time, BMW seems to be aiming at 3-series customers who shy away from the larger cars and their lairy image.’
- ‘A woman in a lairy teeshirt shoves a half-pack of love hearts at me with an ad for the next round of celebrity reality tv.’
- ‘Oh, and the lairy shirt I bought to wear to my leaving do from my last job, in 1998.’
- ‘While most of the characters wore smart, tailored suits, made from authentic Sixties material, Shaun, who plays lecturer Lenny, had to make do with a lairy polyester shirt, full of static electricity.’
- ‘If I didn't want to do something, if I didn't want to be flash on the golf course with a lairy shirt, I wasn't going to do it for anything.’
- ‘Vice City sees you in the role of Tommy Vercetti, just released from prison in a lairy Hawaiian shirt and rolled-up jeans.’
- ‘And next time you're pulling out to decimate a 1 Series BMW with a lairy bodykit, just remember to check the plates.’
3Aggressive or rowdy.
- ‘a couple of lairy people pushed me around’
- ‘‘We would move if you push down,’ said one lairy fellow, ‘But nobody's pushing, so we'll stay where we are.’’
- ‘If Micheál Martin (who's on a bit of a personal crusade against fags) had successfully implemented his ban, would this hung over and rather lairy crew have forsaken their twenty packs?’
- ‘This eruption of checkerboard shirts and big-buckle jeans can reach a point of critical mass, where the whole thing has to explode onto the streets, in a lairy mess of half learned rebel songs and broken glass.’
- ‘A lot of the things one might expect, to be fair, might include anti-social and lairy behaviour but quite apart from that, one would, at the moment expect the bearer of the lag to have a passing interest in football.’
- ‘It was produced by scary, hairy, lairy Martin Hannett and as a whole the songs drunkenly fall and clatter with wild abandon.’
- ‘I tried to reach him on Saturday, with the three million texts and phonecalls which are the trademark of my breed of lairy neurotic woman, but he wasn't having it.’
- ‘He was drunk and lairy, red-faced and petulant.’
- ‘But, as befits the actor whose screen character is a smart but lairy chancer who finds himself out of his depth, Conlon is a bit bemused at his rising reputation.’
- ‘As the party progressed and alcohol flowed, conversation got lairy: at one point a girl there suggested that everyone should question me about sex tips.’
- ‘Yesterday in Brixton Sainsbury's I queued in front of two drunken deafs who opened their beers while they were waiting and were amusingly lairy.’
- ‘I may be a lairy bint but underneath it all, I'm still British.’
- ‘It's not so much that they are lairy or rude or stare at people, they just tend to be a bit loud when hammered and some people tend to take exception to that.’
- ‘They were drunk and lairy and in a group and started singing and shouting without concern for any other passengers' feelings.’
- ‘They crowd around Burger King drinking alcopops and being generally lairy.’
- ‘He was a bit of a joker, a bit loud and lairy at times but he quietened down once he got into his religion.’
- ‘A spokesman on Newsnight said the Sikh community had been demonstrating peacefully for a week and then, on Saturday night, young Sikhs who didn't wear turbans came out of the pub and decided to get lairy.’
Origin
Mid 19th century (originally Cockney slang): alteration of leery. Sense 2 was originally Australian slang and dates from the early 20th century.
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