sprinkly

comparative more sprinkly · superlative most sprinkly

1. Light, tending to sprinkle or fall down softly.

   The rain had tapered off to a sprinkly drizzle, Portland's most prevalent weather condition.

   2007, Bill Cameron, Lost Dog

2. Characterised by sprinkles or sprinkling.

   Humbert's first epiphanic vision of Lolita, for example, is rendered in aquatic, dripping, sprinkly slow motion.

   2007, Barton Palmer, Twentieth Century American Fiction on Screen

3. Subject to being sprinkled on.

   I had rather a sprinkly seat in the bow, but, as we bobbed up and down, I had a good backward look at the town, which, with the ascent of mud in the foreground, looked almost set on a hill.

   1851, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Hurry-Graphs Or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, Taken from Life

4. Haphazardly and incompletely distributed.

   Mary Richmond, general secretary of the Baltimore Organization Society, was disturbed because "under the name of settlement, the old-fashioned mission, distributing a cheap and sprinkly sort of charity, can do more harm than under the right name."

   1967, Allen Freeman Davis, Spearheads for reform: the social settlements and the progressive movement

5. Resembling having been sprinkled with something.

   I have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily--until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe none at all.

   1912, Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

6. Resembling sprinkles.

   Christmas cookies and lemonade I made it safe and sound to my godmother's house in time to frost cookies and dip them in those little sprinkly things...

   2006, Barbara Kelly, Moose Mug at High Noon

   1 more example

   When they are cool, ice them in pretty pastel colours and decorate with interesting sprinkly things. These might include hundreds-and-thousands, sugar flowers, the tops of iced gems (bite the biscuit off first), crystallised violets...

   2005, Catherine Fox, Bridget Gillespie, Extreme Anglicanism: A Liturgical Guide to the Sporting Year