womanlily

comparative more womanlily · superlative most womanlily

1. rareIn a womanly manner.

   Not unconsciously you blush, but dramatically, obviously, with some effort, womanlily, / Solely intent to show thusly the wilful fever of your virginal mysterious blood.

   1902 January 11, Frank Morton, “The Blush”, in The Clipper, volume 8, number 458, Hobart, Tas., →OCLC, page 8, column 2

   3 more examples

   And if thy wiues ſoule were freed from the frailty of her ſexe, it were as manly, as noble, as vnderſtanding, and euery way as excellent as thine owne: Nay, and if it were poſſible for you to change bodies; hers would worke as manlily in thine, and thine as womanlily in hers. Let the husband then bee ſo farre from inſulting ouer, contemning, or vndervaluing his wiues worth, for the weakeneſſe of her ſexe; […]

   1624, Robert Bolton, Some Generall Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God: […], London: […] Felix Kyngston, for Edmund Weauer, […], →OCLC, pages 245–246

   Among the thousands of immigrants crowding our shores the Mormons hold their own manfully or womanlily, rather. These poor creatures come from the most ignorant and degraded society of Europe, and have no concept of the life they are to be inducted into when they reach Utah.

   1882 July 15, Sterling Gazette, volume XXVIII, number 28, Sterling, Ill., →OCLC, page [4], column 1

   They would not write so naturally and charmingly (why cannot we say womanlily?) as most of them do, if they kept sklenting at the male persuasion over their pens. A true woman unbosoms herself more readily and frankly to her sister than to her brother, and the charm of women’s writing lies simply in its womanliness.

   [1884 August 23, “In the Hebrides. By C[onstance] F[rederica] Evelyn Cumming. […]”, in The Otago Daily Times, number 7027, Dunedin, →ISSN, →OCLC, supplement, page 1, column 2

   Synonyms: womanly