delayingly

comparative more delayingly · superlative most delayingly

1. So as to delay.

   He was unpacking too, though as coyly and delayingly as he had undressed that day at the Highgate Ponds.

   2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 11, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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.

   1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Enoch Arden

   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.”

   1885, William Dean Howells, chapter VII, in The Rise of Silas Lapham