trimly
Language: English
Part of speech: adv
Forms: form: more trimly
form: most trimly
Etymology: From trim + -ly.
Senses: examples: text: [W]hen the fight vvas done, / VVhen I vvas dry with rage and extreme toil, / Breathleſs and faint, leaning upon my ſvvord, / Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dreſs’d, / Freſh as a bridegroom […]
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:
text: [T]ell me vvhy / VVith vveeping Eyes ſo oft I ſpy / His VVhiſkers curl'd, and Shoo-ſtrings ty'd, / A nevv Toledo by his Side, / In Shoulder-belt so trimly plac'd, / VVith Band so nicely ſmooth'd and lac'd.
ref: 1707, [Joseph Addison], Rosamond. An Opera. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene [ii], page 17:
text: […] in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within.
ref: 1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 2, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book I (The Coming of the Martians), page 6:
text: In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four young men whose spirits seemed to be at present well above the level of successful Gallicism: […]
ref: 1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “After the Race”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 49:
text: Cora was standing trimly there with her bewildered stare still on him, and memory restored to Bradly the sweet full lines of her naked body under that skimpy frock.
ref: 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 209:
text: Borg has graying black hair and is trimly built, fit from a lifetime of hard work maintaining gas pipelines while trapping on the side.
ref: December 2020, Tim Folger, “North America’s most valuable resource is at risk”, in National Geographic:
glosses: In a trim manner; neatly, smartly.
examples: text: And it is sayde both moste trimly and truly in the Epistle to the Hebreues, as we heard afore: If ye be not vnder correction, (wherof all are partakers) then are ye bastardes and not sonnes.
ref: 1566, Thomas Becon, “The third Sonday after Easter, The Gospell. Ihon. xvi.”, in A New Postil Conteinyng Most Godly and Learned Sermons upon all the Sonday Gospelles, London, page 235:
text: 1595, George Peele, The Old Wives’ Tale, The Malone Society Reprints, 1908, lines 104-106,
[…] a merry winters tale would drive away the time trimly, come I am sure you are not without a score.
text: Lewis the eleventh King of France is sufficiently condemn’d by Posterity for sending Oliver his Barber in an Embassage to a Princesse, who so trimly dispatch’d his businesse, that he left it in the suddes, and had been well wash’d in the river at Gant for his pains, if his feet had not been the more nimble.
ref: 1642, Thomas Fuller, “The Embassadour”, in The Holy State, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel for John Williams, […], →OCLC, book IV, page 319:
glosses: Effectively, handily, nicely, thoroughly, soundly, well.