Furry means covered in thick soft animal hair. A furry animal, furry ears, soft and furry.
It describes the covering rather than the animal, so a furry hood and a furry rabbit both qualify. Applied to a tongue or a kettle it means coated, which is a quite different and less pleasant sense. Note that furry has also become the name of a fandom built around anthropomorphic animal characters, which is now the sense a great many people meet first.
1adjectivefurryCovered in thick soft animal hair.
“The kitten curled up in a furry ball on my lap.”
2adjectivecoatedCoated, of a tongue or a kettle.
“I woke up with a furry tongue and a terrible headache.”
furry is a quality of being hair-covered.
Anglo-Norman
fuerre
Middle English
furre
English
fur
English, today
furry
Built from
From fur + -y. fur comes from Middle English furre, from Anglo-Norman fuerre. From Middle English furre,forre, from Anglo-Norman forre,fuerre (“case; sheath”), from Frankish fōdar, from Proto-West Germanic fōdr, from Proto-Germanic fōdrą (“sheath”) (compare Old English fōdor (“sheaf”), Dutch voering (“lining”), German Futter (“lining”), Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐌳𐍂 (“sheath”)), from Proto-Indo-European peh₂-, poh₂- (“to protect”) (compare Lithuanian piemuō (“protection”), Ancient Greek πῶῠ̈ (“flock”), πῶμα (“lid”), ποιμήν (“shepherd”), xcl հօրան (“herd, flock”), kmr pawan (“to watch over”), Sanskrit पाति (“he watches, protects”). The verb is from Middle English furren, from Anglo-Norman furrer, forrer, fourrer (“to line, stuff, fill”), from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA