compassionately

comparative more compassionately · superlative most compassionately

1. In a compassionate manner.

   1 more example

   And one of the greatest exponents of rhyming slang I ever knew once addressed this question to me: "Tell me, is my titfer on solicitor's fee?" Now I got titfer" immediately, of course. The question had something to do with his hat. But after trying for fifteen minutes to work out what "solicitor's fee" meant, I had to give up. Almost compassionately the expert explained. A solicitor (attorney) usually charges six shillings and eightpence, or colloquially speaking, six and eight. Six and eight is rhyming slang for straight. So all he wanted to know was if his hat were on straight.

   1946, C[ecil] V[incent] R[aymond] Thompson, chapter 3, in How to Like an Englishman, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →OCLC, pages 50–51