delayingly

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From delaying +‎ -ly.

Adverb[edit]

delayingly (comparative more delayingly, superlative most delayingly)

  1. So as to delay.
    • 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Enoch Arden[1]:
      And Annie could have wept for pity of him;
      And yet she held him on delayingly
      With many a scarce-believable excuse,
      Trying his truth and his long-sufferance,
      Till half-another year had slipt away.
    • 1885, William Dean Howells, chapter VII, in The Rise of Silas Lapham[2]:
      The mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to occupy herself delayingly with the minor care: “Why, you have been sitting up all night! You will kill yourself.”
    • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 11, in The Line of Beauty [], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:
      He was unpacking too, though as coyly and delayingly as he had undressed that day at the Highgate Ponds.