What does dollied mean?
'Dollied' is the simple past and past participle of the verb 'to dolly'. Its dominant modern meaning belongs to the language of cinema: when a camera is dollied, it is moved smoothly toward or away from a subject while mounted on a dolly, a wheeled cart designed for fluid tracking shots. Directors and cinematographers speak of having 'dollied in' for intimacy or 'dollied out' to reveal scale, making the word a staple of film production vocabulary. The term derives from 'dolly', a familiar English pet form of the name Dorothy, which came to denote any small wheeled contrivance — from furniture movers to railway handcars. A second, now largely historical British sense refers to washing clothes by agitating them with a dolly, a wooden plunging implement used before the washing machine. Today the word survives almost exclusively in film and video contexts, where it conveys precision, craft, and deliberate visual storytelling.
Simple past tense and past participle of 'dolly': to move a camera on a wheeled dolly, especially toward or away from the subject being filmed.
"The crew dollied the camera along a track to follow the actor through the corridor."
Frequently paired with the adverbs 'in', 'out', or 'back' to indicate direction of movement.
To wash or launder clothes using a dolly, a wooden implement for agitating laundry in a tub.
"On Mondays she dollied the week's washing in the copper before hanging it out to dry."
This sense is obsolete or confined to older rural British usage.
Every sweeping movie shot that glides toward an actor's face exists because someone once 'dollied' a camera — named after the wheeled cart that carries it.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dollied
The verb 'to dolly' derives from the noun 'dolly', which originated as a diminutive of the female given name Dorothy via the pet form Doll. From the late 18th century onward, 'dolly' was applied generically to small mechanical aids and wheeled devices — including the laundry dolly and, by the early 20th century, the camera dolly of motion-picture production. The verb arose naturally from this noun, so 'dollied' simply records an action performed with such a device.
Related word forms
How dollied is actually used
The camera-movement sense is standard technical vocabulary in filmmaking and is used both transitively ('the operator dollied the camera') and intransitively with directional adverbs ('dollied in', 'dollied out'). The laundry sense is now largely obsolete or dialectal in British English.
Easily confused with dollied
'Doilies' are small decorative mats placed under dishes, whereas 'dollied' is the past tense of the verb 'to dolly', meaning to move a camera on a wheeled platform.