weevily

comparative more weevily · superlative most weevily · alternative weevilly

1. Infested with or containing weevils.

   1813, The Literary Panorama, Volume 13, “State of Trade,” Lloyd’s Coffee House, June 21, p. 1037, A considerable portion of the rice now on hand is of inferior quality, and weevily; it gives distaste in families, and few domestics make sufficiently good use of their eyes to pick it carefully.

   3 more examples

   O, I’ll have none of your weevily wheat, And I’ll have none of your barley, O, I’ll have none of your weevily wheat To bake a cake for Charlie.

   1893, Albert Paine, “Weevily Wheat”, in Rhymes by Two Friends, Fort Scott, Kansas, page 112

   […] Hornblower remembered the stuffy dark midshipman’s berth, the smells and the creakings, the bitter cold nights, turning out in response to the call for all hands, the weevilly bread and the wooden beef, and he yearned for them all, with the sick feeling of hopeless longing.

   1950, C. S. Forester, “The Penalty of Failure”, in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, London: Michael Joseph

   Hind had made his fortune provisioning railway construction gangs and lakeboat crews with the very cheapest of weevily foodstuffs.

   2011, Guy Vanderhaeghe, chapter 9, in A Good Man,, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, page 139