feebly
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English febly; equivalent to feeble + -ly, euphonically blending -le and -ly due to difficulty of pronouncing -blely. Compare nimbly, nobly, and Latinate -ably and -ibly.
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈfiːbli/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- Hyphenation: feeb‧ly
Adverb
[edit]feebly (comparative more feebly, superlative most feebly)
- In a feeble manner.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 4, page 95:
- Feebly ſhe ſhriekt, but ſo feebly indeed / That Britomart heard not the ſhrilling ſound.
- 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 215:
- The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere nearby, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there.
References
[edit]- “feebly”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.