deplorably

comparative more deplorably · superlative most deplorably

1. in a deplorable manner

   Reflection finds the circumstance unfortunate that most of the agreeable actions of life are either forbidden or else deplorably behedged with restrictions.

   1927, James Branch Cabell, Straws and Prayer-Books

   3 more examples

   As it is, the miner is one of the most overworked and deplorably underpaid men in the country. […] I know very well that if your supply of coal depended on my walking several miles to a pithead, descending in a cage for half a mile, walking again to the dwindling tunnel where I had to work, then slogging away for about seven hours in that hell, all for something like two pounds a week, your grates would be empty.

   1934, J[ohn] B[oynton] Priestley, “To East Durham and the Tees”, in English Journey […], London: William Heinemann in association with Victor Gollancz, →OCLC, section 1, page 330

   But, setting this view aside, dishonorable would it be in the South were she willing to abandon to shame the memory of brave men who with signal personal disinterestedness warred in her behalf, though from motives, as we believe, so deplorably astray.

   1866, Herman Melville, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, Supplement

   Jezebel, though she bent the knee to Baal, was pleasing in Ahab’s sight; and he saw that her father’s army, though deplorably pagan, wielded heavy swords.

   1928 January, Ernest C. Wilson, “A King and a Kingdom That Limped”, in Youth, volume 2, number 1, page 13