brightliest
Language: English
Part of speech: adv
Senses: examples: text: Oh, never till then I knew the worth / Of woman’s love, its power to bless; / Which like the star, shines brightliest forth, / In darkest hour of bitterness!
ref: 1829 May, Charles M., “Stanzas”, in The Ladies’ Museum […], volume I, London: James Robins and Co. […], page 271:
text: Then Hector strove to break the rang’d array, / Where brightliest mail’d the densest squadrons lay; […]
ref: 1831, Homer, translated by William Sotheby, “The Fifteenth Book of the Iliad”, in The Iliad of Homer, […], volume II, London: John Murray, […], page 105:
text: Him I remember while this life endures. / The day lives brightliest in my memory / When from a matin fate he snatched my days.
ref: 1835, [Thomas J. F. Kelly], “Act II. Scene I.—Castle of Ingelheim.”, in Henry IV. of Germany; a Tragedy, in Five Acts, New York, N.Y.: […] Osborn & Buckingham, […], page 33:
text: When danger, or the dread of it, encompasses the soul—when timidity fluctuates and excitement roars—who then controls? Not he, whose intellect is most logically practised—whose memory is richest stored—whose tongue is brightliest eloquent: but he whose eye blenches least—whose heart beats the calmest: he, it is, is master of the hour.
ref: 1838, [Horace Binney Wallace], chapter VII, in Stanley; or The Recollections of a Man of the World. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea & Blanchard, […], page 78:
text: But while the sun shone /brightest⟩brightliest/,—(and it shines now—) I said “The cold wind is felt thro’ it all,—she keeps the room!” The wind is unremitting,—savage.
ref: 1846 April 27, Robert Browning, “332 (W168): R.B. to E.B.B.”, in Elvan Kintner, editor, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, volume II (March 1846–September 1846), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, published 1969, →ISBN, pages 657–658:
text: The dawn breaks at the darkest hour; / Stars brightliest shine when midnight skies / Are palled in gloom; […]
ref: 1850, James Clarence Mangan, “Bear Up. Ballad.”, in Hercules Ellis, editor, Romances and Ballads of Ireland, Dublin: […] James Duffy, […], stanza II, page 12:
text: At night, / When all the stars burned brightliest, and the bowers / Of song were silent, he in stealth returned— / And lo! the Spirit slumbering as before.
ref: 1850, Philip James Bailey, “The Angel World”, in The Angel World, and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, page 37:
text: [H]e [Edwin Guest] looks upon the final e of the adjective as being […] the affixed e which in Anglo-Saxon converted an adjective into an adverb. Thus, in the line from the Clerke’s Tale, in the Canterbury Tales, he regards bright-e as representing, not our present adjective bright, but our adverb brightly. In the superlative, however, he affirms, it is not the adverb, but the adjective, that takes the e; in other words, that brightest is brighteste, and that brightliest is brightest.
ref: [1851, George L[illie] Craik, “[…] the Period of Middle English; […]”, in Outlines of the History of the English Language for the Use of the Junior Classes in Colleges and the Higher Classes in Schools, London: Chapman and Hall, […], subsection I, pages 111–112:
text: E’en Affection’s light is gone / Quickly where it brightliest shone, / And the tones that charm’d thy care / Leave dead silence on the air; / Is such thy home?
ref: 1854, Caroline Dent, “Home”, in Thougths and Sketches in Verse, London: Arthur Hall, Virtue, & Co. […], page 162:
text: She haughtily swept by the Sassenach maiden, / Whose brow was with jewels the brightliest laden!
ref: 1855, J. Frazer, “Aileen O’Moore”, in Edward Hayes, editor, The Ballads of Ireland, volume II, London; Edinburgh; Dublin: A[rchibald] Fullarton & Co., page 189:
text: In the superlative the adverb terminated in -est simply, as in A.S. swiftost and swiftest=Old English swiftest=modern swiftliest. So brightest=brightliest, adv.; but brighteste=brightest, adj.
ref: [1860, A[ugustus] H[enry] Keane, “(1350-1450). Middle English Period—[…]”, in Handbook of the History of the English Language, for the Use of Schools and Colleges, London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts; Dublin: John F. Fowler, […], subsection 4, pages 74–75:
text: Pause not on the path of duty! / Progress is life’s law divine; / Rest doth rust—the rays of beauty / Brightliest when fleetest shine.
ref: 1861, William Billington, “Pause Not on the Path of Duty”, in Sheen and Shade: Lyrical Poems, Blackburn, Lancashire: John Neville Haworth, […]; London: Hall & Virtue, […], page 86:
text: You are afraid of death—of the judgment—of eternity. That is thirst! Alas, I know it, for I have stood in the green places, where life’s water sparkled brightliest to mortal lips, and found the cup dashed with wormwood, and longed the while for water from a purer spring.
ref: 1869, Charles Wadsworth, “The Gospel Call”, in Sermons, New York, N.Y.; San Francisco, Calif.: A[nton] Roman & Company, […], page 86:
text: Poetry is Faith; / It sees the throne of God, / Beyond the frozen seas of death, / In realms by Angels trod. / It blossoms brightliest above, / Where all is pure and perfect love!
ref: 1875, Sheldon Chadwick, “What Is Poetry?”, in Working and Singing: Poems, Lyrics, and Songs on the Life-March, London: […] Edwin Benson, […], page 82, column 2:
text: As we can have the adjectival forms bright, brighter, brightest, so we can have the adverbial forms brightly, brightlier, brightliest, but degree is alike inconceivable in the adjective ‘round,’ and the A. ‘here.’
ref: [1876, “Ad′verb”, in John M[erry] Ross, editor, The Globe Enyclopædia of Universal Information, volume I, Boston, Mass.: Estes & Lauriat, […], page 25, column 1:
text: Warm is our blood and our manhood the knightliest, / Loyal our service and gracious our quest. / How should we doubt when the sunlight falls brightliest? / How should we fear when time’s yoke presses lightliest? / What should we see but the glow of the West / In the eyes we love best?
ref: 1880 May 22, John Moran, “Loyalty”, in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, volume L, number 1,286, New York, N.Y.: Frank Leslie’s Publishing House, page 190, column 1:
text: In the southwest the Great Dog with the splendid Sirius (“which brightliest shines when laved of ocean’s wave”) shows resplendently.
ref: 1886 January 2, Richard A[nthony] Proctor, “Night Sky.—December and January.”, in Scientific American […], volume LIV, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Munn & Co., page 3, column 1:
text: Faiths as faiths perish one after another, but each in passing away bequeaths for the enrichment of the after-world whatever elements it has contained of imaginative or moral truth or beauty. The polytheism of ancient Greece, embodying the instinctive effort of the brightliest-gifted human race to explain its earliest experiences of nature and civilization, of the thousand moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ and control the life of man on earth, is rich beyond measure in such elements; […]
ref: [1887], Sidney Colvin, “Isabella.—Hyperion.—The Eve of St. Agnes.—The Eve of St. Mark.—La Belle Dame Sans Merci.—Lamia.—The Odes.—The Plays.”, in John Morley, editor, Keats (English Men of Letters; 38), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], page 151:
text: Hail, O sacred Isle, / That brightliest to heaven’s rosiest dawn dost smile!
ref: 1890, Victor Hugo, translated by Nelson R[ich] Tyerman, “Jersey”, in G[eorge] T[homas] Bettany, editor, Select Poems and Tragedies (The Minerva Library of Famous Books; 17), London; New York, N.Y.; Melbourne, Vic.: Ward, Lock, and Co., section “Personal Poems”, page 144:
text: Had I been a star, / I had put discord in the sphery music, / Were I not Venus, and burned brightliest.
ref: 1898, Thomas Fergusson, chapter III, in Walter Græme; or, A Home among the Hills, and Other Poems, Paisley, Renfrewshire: J[ames] and R[obert] Parlane; Edinburgh; Glasgow: John Menzies and Co.; London: Houlston and Sons, page 46:
text: It is the hour when stars and women brightliest beam.
ref: 1906, Victor Hugo, translated by John Payne, “Night-Walk”, in Flowers of France: The Romantic Period: Hugo to Leconte de Lisle: Representative Poems of the Nineteenth Century Rendered into English Verse in Accordance with the Original Forms: […], volume I (The Main Battle), London: […] [T]he Villon Society: […], page 44:
text: Because from thy pure bosom brightliest spring / The pure and sacred fires, and fairest shine / In all the ways of earth; […] Thee do we make our shrine, whose light doth glow / E’en through the hollow of our fearful night, / To bring us comfort of the light of thee.
ref: 1921 January 29, Ralph Gordon, “Russia: Shrine”, in Jacob Wittmer Hartmann, editor, Soviet Russia: A Weekly Journal of Information, volume IV, number 5, New York, N.Y.: Kenneth Durant, page 123, column 2:
text: Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, / Gentlemen, / Pythagoras, Thucydides, / Herodotus, and Homer, – yea, / Clement, Augustin, Origen, / Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day, / Gentlemen. […] 62 brightlier] brightliest ms
ref: 1922, Thomas Hardy, “An Ancient to Ancients”, in James Gibson, editor, The Variorum Edition of the Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., published 1978 (1979 edition), →ISBN, section “Late Lyrics and Earlier”, page 697, lines 57–63:
text: He whose torch of wisdom now burned brightliest at Athens had returned from exile, and his distracted nation enjoyed again some measure of freedom.
ref: 1924, Eden Phillpotts, “The Mission”, in The Treasures of Typhon, London: Grant Richards Ltd. […], page 8:
text: Meantime we waited, watching, and perceived / The wondrous rainbow from our common sun / Of intellect shine brightliest on the cloud / Of man’s mistaken hope; for what had we, / Who taught in terms of life and death, to set / Against this gleaming immortality?
ref: 1924, Eden Phillpotts, “The Rationalists”, in Thoughts in Prose and Verse, London: Watts & Co., […], page 7:
text: One of the brightliest gifted among University students, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru was perhaps never a candidate for a temporary munsiffship or the post of subregistrar on probation or an officiating vacancy under a village dominie.
ref: 1936 May, Hira Lal Chatterji, “Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru’s Report on Unemployment”, in Ramananda Chatterjee, editor, The Modern Review (A Monthly Review and Miscellany), volume LIX, number 5 (353 overall), Calcutta, Bengal Province: The Modern Review Office […], page 505, column 1:
text: You can look down into the Canyon [from the Rim] and everybody sees this rock, it’s so bright. […] The Hakatai shale. […] If you go out there to the Rim, you will see that color-wise it overpowers the Redwall by far, it overpowers the Supai, it overpowers the Hermit shale — which are all the real red units. The Dox sandstone is a beautiful red, too, but the Hakatai is orange. It is the brightliest-colored rock in the Canyon.
ref: 1999, Craig Childs, quoting Bruce Aiken, “Bruce Aiken: The Painter”, in Leo W. Banks, Craig Childs, Grand Canyon Stories: Then & Now, Phoenix, Ariz.: Arizona Highways Books, →ISBN, section “Now”, pages 162–163:
glosses: superlative form of brightly: most brightly