Definition of "burley"

The price received by farmers at the auctions for burley has decreased, other conditions being about average, around 1.45 cents for each 10-million-pound increase in the production of burley

1952, Glenn Leroy Johnson, Burley Tobacco Control Programs, page 59

Fish will swim up your burley trail looking for the source which should be where your baits are placed, instead of dumping a heap of burley at once where the fish will feed on it quickly and move on.

2018, Jacks Boric, “Fishing with Burley”, in Shimano Fishing Oceania‎

Burley shows came to Times Square after vaudeville started its decline, and took over many of the darkened old theaters. The Minsky family had become synonymous with burlesque beginning in its earliest days, was hugely profitable.

2004 August 12, Vicki Gold Levi, Steven Heller, Times Square Style: Graphics from the Great White Way, Princeton Architectural Press

The Western Vaudeville Managers' Association (WVMA) and the Orpheum soon merged. [...] opined, "that the top all-around artist of today is Jim Barton, who was a burley comic, a skater, a storyteller, a dancer, a singer, […]"

2007, Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances in America, Psychology Press, page 74

It can vary anywhere from burley (burlesque) to Phi Beta Kappa. […]

2018 June 13, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Hell's Cartographers, Courier Dover Publications, page 71