a. Now dial. Also lyary. [Var. of LIRY a.] Of cattle: Having a superabundance of lean flesh.
[1483: see LIRY, s.v. LIRE sb.1]
1803. A. Hunter, Georg. Ess., IV. 351. Lyery, or black-fleshed.
1807. Culley, in W. C. L. Martin, Ox, 51/1. Cattle, well known to the breeders adjoining the river Tees by the appellation of ‘lyery,’ or ‘double-lyered’; that is, black-fleshed.
a. 1843. Southey, Commpl. Bk., IV. 400. Those [Lincolnshire oxen] that never fatten are called lyery.
c. 1847. W. C. L. Martin, The Ox, 41/2. The cattle in general were large,… slow to fatten … and often black, or foul-fleshed, or as it is called in Yorkshire ‘lyery.’
1855. Stephens, Bk. Farm (ed. 2), II. 143/1. When the flesh [of an ox] becomes heavy on the thighs, making a sort of double thigh, the thigh is called lyary.
