daffodilly

A form of daffodil, perhaps influenced by lily;^[1] in colloquial and childish use, by -y (diminutive suffix).

daffodilly (plural daffodillies)

1. (poetic, dialectal, colloquial or childish) A daffodil.
   • 1835 September, Mary Howitt, “Traditionary Ballads. […] No. V.—The Lady Magdalene. A Legend of an English Hall.”, in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1835, volume II (New Series), number XXI, Edinburgh: William Tait; […], →OCLC, part II, page 598, column 1:

     And he cut the leaves of the snow-drop down, / And tied up the daffodilly; / And then he sung, as he bent at ’s work, / With a “Hiho! willy, willy.”

   • 2000, Anselm Hollo, poem 16, in rue Wilson Monday, Albuquerque, N.M.: La Alameda Press, →ISBN, page 30:

     OK I’ll take it one flight down with a daffodilly for my love […]

   • 2015, “February 5: Fancy Dancin’ Goofy”, in Disney Junior 365 Stories: A Story a Day, Bath, Somerset: Parragon, →ISBN, page 38:

     Goofy ran for the door. “I need a daffodilly!” he said. There was one daffodil left in the garden, but he needed something to cut it.

From daffodil +‎ -y (adjectival suffix).^[2]

daffodilly (comparative more daffodilly, superlative most daffodilly) (rare)

1. Resembling or characteristic of a daffodil.
   • 1851 July 16, Gorham A. Worth, letter; quoted in “To Gorham A. Worth”, in James Franklin Beard, editor, The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, volume VI, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968, →LCCN, →OCLC, footnote 3, page 279:

     The demise of a distinguished person in relaton to whom (as in your case) much may be said on both sides, is a sort of God send to the press. Only think of it! The whole periodical & diurnal press of England ringing with the praise of such a daffodilly Poet as [William] Wordsworth!

   • 1926 May, B. Beatrice Lubitz, “The Understudy […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LXXXVII, number 4, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], →OCLC, section I, page 679:

     May was forced to obey. She felt belittled standing on line. Some day, when she’d be famous, she vowed, she’d make this daffodilly young fellow eat out of her hand. She regarded him down her nose, yet rather liked his nice manners. Some one called him Mart, but to May he was—and always remained—Wales.

   • 1986, Hyacinthe Hill, “Aquarius”, in Poetry and the Stars, Putnam Valley, N.Y.: Scop and Gleeman Publishers, →ISBN, page 78:

     I am, by tradition, authority, left unimpressed. I see that corns, that warts, that old, gray thoughts need to be cut away by my sapphire ideas, my Uranian mind and my daffodilly whims.

   • 1994, Patricia Morley, “Montreal Again: Running for the Last Train, 1976–86”, in As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story, Montreal, Que.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, →ISBN, page 181:

     Minor irritations, mere thistles in a wood of thorns, included preparing dinner for the boys at a time agreed to by all, only to find that neither one turned up all evening, promises notwithstanding. Any cook knows how irritating this can be. Leo fumed, “I kid you not, I’m hot to kill. Me, the daffodilly poet of the 20s.”

2. With daffodils.

   Synonym: daffodilled

   • 1992, A[lexander] B. Chambers, “[Robert] Herrick and the Ceremonies of Art”, in Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry, Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, →ISBN, page 232:

     It is Homer’s “asphodelos leimon,” the daffodilly mead or meadow, descriptive of Elysium, the Hesperides or western isles of departed shades.

   • 2015, Nick Tosches, chapter 31, in Under Tiberius: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 273:

     He ceded a moment to the daffodilly breeze and the sound of crickets before answering.

   • 2017, John Gallas, “Song 90 […]”, in The Little Sublime Comedy, Manchester: Carcanet Press, →ISBN, page 112:

     Ahhh, and Oooo, said the sad ones. Who were greeted by a battery of baa-lambs that butted them from their bosky balcony into the daffodilly deeps.