stately

comparative statelier · superlative stateliest

1. Worthy of respect; dignified, regal.

   Warwick's first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered.

   1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC

2. Deliberate, unhurried; dignified.

   And much as they welcome his promise to repeal "don't ask, don't tell", they are dismayed by the stately pace and bungled tactics of his attempts to do so.

   2010 October 14, “An Own Goal on Gay Rights”, in The Economist

   2 more examples

   At about twenty past three in the afternoon, these aircraft duly began to arrive. The cruiser Northampton was towing Hornet at a stately five knots when, out of the sky, came seven torpedo-armed aircraft. They managed to miss the barely-moving Hornet with all but one drop... but one hit was really all that it took, the location causing additional damage to the stricken carrier and demolishing most of the repairs that had been made to the earlier damage.

   2021 February 3, Drachinifel, 20:43 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - Santa Cruz (IJN 2 : 2 USN), archived from the original on 04 Dec 2022

   Germany can’t afford to stick to the stately plod into decline that Merkel initiated any longer. Merz will have to act fast, and break things to pull the country out of the quagmire it finds itself in.

   2025 February 23, Lisa Haseldine, “Whatever happens next, Merkelism is finished”, in The Telegraph, archived from the original on 23 Feb 2025

3. Grand; impressive; imposing.

   Flora is a good scout, a favourite with the jockeys on account of her stately breasts and the generous use she puts them to.

   1986, John le Carré [pseudonym; David John Moore Cornwell], A Perfect Spy

   3 more examples

   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.

   1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, page 55

   Their stately offices—their pleasant gardens—the magnificent cloisters constructed for their recreation, were all dilapidated and ruinous; […]

   1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, pages 271–272

   Below is the deep abyss of the Lauterbrunnen valley, and at its head a stately semi-circle of mountains, with the pyramidal Lauterbrunnen Breithorn as the centre-piece.

   1960 December, Voyageur, “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 752

comparative more stately · superlative most stately

1. In a stately manner.