villainly
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more villainly
form: most villainly
Etymology: From villain + -ly.
Senses: examples: text: By the ox of St. Luke, thou idle, cogging knave—thou rascally, miscreant spy, if ever I catch thee dogging my footsteps, by day or night, or concerning thyself in any way about act of mine, I will think no more of drawing my dagger across thy villainly throat, than I would of slicing a melon or cucumber at my luncheon.
ref: 1853, Robert Bigsby, Ombo. A Dramatic Romance, in Twelve Acts., London: Edward T. Whitfield; Derby: Richard Keene, act IV, scene 4, page 93:
text: And though he has paid the penalty of his crime with his worthless life, yet many of his compeers in villainly adventure still live, and his daring and sworn associates are scattered throughout the northern portion of this land;
ref: 1860 January 19, John Herbert Claiborne, “Politics of the Ante-Bellum Period”, in Seventy-Five Years in Old Virginia with Some Account of the Life of the Author and Some History of the People Amongst Whom His Lot Was Cast,—Their Character, Their Condition, and Their Conduct Before the War, During the War and After the War, New York, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.: The Neale Publishing Company, published 1904, page 149:
text: Shirley’s is a world of young lovers, delightfully protesting their eternal constancy, of villainly villains, of unscrupulous servants, and of “humour” characters such as seize and transport the imagination:[…]
ref: 1951, W. H. S. Jones, The Story of St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., page 153:
text: Strikingly effective performance as the villainly Vitellia…
ref: 1969 October, The Telegraph, quotee, Musical America, published 1970, page 166:
text: During the hours the villainly Mandel Pukur fellows kept us standing I became exceedingly thirsty, and also hungry, but gradually the need to urinate became of even more pressing urgency.
ref: 1987, Sara Banerji, chapter 14, in The Wedding of Jayanthi Mandel, Bloomsbury Reader, published 2012, →ISBN:
text: Emphases were given to the description of the actors' facial features and expression to fit the characters into righteous, moral and energetic types, as contrasted with the landlords' villainly physical appearance.
ref: 1988, Eleventh IAHA Conference: Session VIII (A, B, and C), page 32:
text: Her pastiche of a villainly adventure is far more exciting than most originals in the genre.
ref: 1989, Julia Eccleshare, Children’s Books of the Year, London: Andersen Press, →ISBN, page 48:
text: Le roman de la rose, ed. A. Strubel, 2097 ff: “See to it that you will not use these dirty and vulgar words, and also see to it that you don’t open your mouth to utter villainly things. I do not consider him courtly who calls the dirty and ugly by name.”
ref: 2001, Ulf Malm, Dolssor Conina: Lust, the Bawdy, and Obscenity in Medieval Occitan and Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poetry and Latin Secular Love Song, Uppsala, →ISBN, page 41:
text: Take that, you villainly villain!
ref: 2009, T. A. Barron, “The Blight”, in Merlin Book 7: Doomraga’s Revenge, Puffin Books, published 2011, →ISBN:
text: In these glorious envisionings, the ministerial Brainard, effete and villainly, had looked on gloomily from his place at the foot of the table, next to the kitchen maid.[…]Brainard—it had to be Brainard, Henry knew, not effete and villainly at all, but a perfectly ordinary fellow—[…]
ref: 2011, Becky Thacker, Faithful Unto Death, Ann Arbor, Mich.: the University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, pages 19–20:
glosses: Characteristic of a villain.
Synonyms: villainous
villainy