Dolly

How to spell dolly

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dolly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dolly mean?

1. nounA child's small model of a person, used as a toy.
2. nounA low wheeled platform used for moving heavy loads.
3. nounA wheeled mount that carries a film or television camera smoothly during a shot.

Dolly in a sentence

• The toddler refused to sleep without her favourite dolly.

• The removal men slid the heavy fridge onto a dolly and rolled it out.

• The operator pushed the camera along the track on a dolly for the long tracking shot.

• He carved a wooden dolly for his granddaughter's birthday.

• We strapped the engine block to a dolly to wheel it across the workshop.

• The crew laid rails so the dolly could glide beside the actors.

Where does dolly come from?

Language of origin: Other

Dolly began life as an affectionate pet form of the woman's name Doll, which was itself a familiar shortening of Dorothy, just as Molly grew out of Mary and Polly out of Mary or Margaret. By the 1600s 'doll' had drifted from being a generic name for a sweetheart or pretty woman into the meaning we know today, a small model of a human figure used as a toy, and the diminutive 'dolly' followed close behind as the cosy nursery form. From that homely toy the word was later borrowed by tradespeople and engineers for various small mechanical helpers that, like a doll, were little stand-ins doing a job: a low wheeled platform for shifting heavy loads, and the wheeled mount that carries a film camera smoothly across a set. The spelling trap is simply the doubled 'l' and the final 'y', a pattern that mirrors the related names Molly and Polly. Because the root is a personal name rather than a Latin or Greek term, the word carries no helpful classical root to lean on for the spelling.

How the word is built

• doll (a child's toy figure, originally a pet form of the name Dorothy)
• -y (diminutive/affectionate suffix)