milky

adj

Etymology: From Middle English mylky, melky, equivalent to milk + -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian moalkig (“milky”), West Frisian molkich (“milky”), Dutch melkig (“milky”), German Low German melkig (“milky”), German milchig (“milky”), Danish mælkig (“milky”), Swedish mjölkig (“milky”), Icelandic mjólkugur (“milky”). Doublet of milchig.

1. Resembling milk in color, consistency, smell, etc.; consisting of milk.

   “his sword, Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:”

   “The Pails high-foaming with a milky Flood,”

2. Of the black in an image, appearing as dark gray rather than black.
3. Containing (an especially large amount of) milk.

   “milky tea; milky cocoa”

   “Mrs. Anthony, their daily housekeeper, brought in the milky coffee and placed it on the breakfast table.”

4. Containing a whitish liquid, juicy.

   “1800, Robert Bloomfield, The Farmer’s Boy, London: Vernor & Hood et al., “Summer,” p. 30, Shot up from broad rank blades that droop below, The nodding WHEAT-EAR forms a graceful bow, With milky kernels starting full, weigh’d down, Ere yet the sun hath ting’d its head with brown;”

   “[…] the servile Eries were staggering out of the corn fields laden with ripe ears; and the famished soldiers were shouting and cursing at them and tearing the corn from their arms to gnaw the raw and milky grains.”

5. Cowardly.

   “Has friendship such a faint and milky heart?”

   “‘Who said there was going to be any killing?’ The lightning flared up and showed his tight shabby jacket, the bunch of soft hair at the nape. ‘I’ve got a date, that’s all. You be careful what you say, Spicer. You aren’t milky, are you?’ ‘I’m not milky. You got me wrong, Pinkie. I just don’t want another killing […]’”

6. Immature, childish.

   “Gone is your fighting Youth, whom you have bred From milkie Childhood to the years of bloud!”

   “There were the everlasting hills around, even as they had grown for countless ages, beneath the still depths of the primeval chalk ocean, in the milky youth of this great English land.”

7. Producing milk, lactating.

   “As great a noyse, as when in Cymbrian plaine An heard of Bulles, whom kindly rage doth sting, Doe for the milky mothers want complaine, And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing,”

   “[…] ye heare the Lamb by many a bleat Woo’d to come suck the milkie Teat:”