greenery-yallery

English

Etymology

From green +‎ -ery + nonstandard pronunciation of yellow +‎ -y.

Adjective

greenery-yallery (comparative more greenery-yallery, superlative most greenery-yallery)

  1. Pertaining to the colours green and yellow as used in the style of late-nineteenth-century Aestheticism; hence, typical of Aestheticism; affected. [from 19th c.]
    • 1881, WS Gilbert, Patience:
      A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, / Foot-in-the-grave young man.
    • 1945, Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited:
      Nothing greenery-yallery about her. So gay, so correct, so unaffected.
    • 2019, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs, Yale University Press, page 106:
      [T]he Abu Dhabi TV show Sha’ir al-Maliyun, ‘Millionaire Poet’ […] is more than some greenery-yallery eisteddfod: in a land where rulers attack their enemies with odes, poetry is still portentous and powerful.
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