Other forms: gullies
A gully is a channel worn into the ground by running water. A deep gully, down the gully, gully erosion.
It starts as a rill and deepens fast once water concentrates, and gully erosion can take a field out of use within a few seasons. In cricket the gully is a fielding position beside the slips. The origin is probably the French for a gullet.
1noungullyA channel worn into the ground by running water.
“Heavy rain had washed a deep gully into the hillside.”
gully is a channel.
Probably from Old French goulet, a gullet or narrow passage, from Latin gula, the throat.
Latin
gula — throat
Old French
goulet
Middle English
golet — esophagus, gullet
English, today
gully
Built from
Origin unknown. Possibly from a variant of Middle English golet (“esophagus, gullet”), from Old French goulet, from Latin gula (“throat”). Shift in meaning in Middle English to "water channel, ravine" may have been influenced by Middle English gylle, gille, galle (“deep narrow valley, ravine”); see gill. Compare Dutch geul. Alternatively, from a diminutive of dialectal gull (“fissue, chasm”) -y. See gull, gullick.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA