A person's life.
"The old stereotype portrayed him as a nelly who wore bright colors and spoke in a high-pitched voice."
An effeminate homosexual man.
"The old woman wore bright red nelly socks with her floral dress."
Unmanly; effeminate.
"The bully sneered at his opponent, calling him a nelly because he wouldn't fight back."
A spelling variant of Nellie, a diminutive of the female given names Eleanor and Helen.
"When filling out the official form, she decided to sign her name as Nelly instead of using the more common spelling Nellie."
Nelly is a shortened form of Nelly Duff, which was originally used to mean "puff," referring to the brief burst of air taken in during breathing or exhaled as one's last breath before death. The term traveled into English through this specific nickname rather than evolving from an older word with the same meaning.