unwarrantably

English

Etymology

From unwarrantable +‎ -ly.

Adverb

unwarrantably (comparative more unwarrantably, superlative most unwarrantably)

1. In an unwarrantable manner; in a manner that cannot be justified.
   • 1662, Richard Baxter, A Saint or a Brute, London: Francis Tyton & Nevil Simmons, Chapter 4, p. ,^[1]

     Holiness maketh men meek and patient, and teacheth subjects not to make too great a matter of any injury that is done them; nor to censure unwarrantably the actions of their superiours […]

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 104”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent.

   • 1937, H. G. Wells, Star Begotten, Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006, Chapter 8, 5, p. 118,^[2]

     There is this secondary world which has worked its way into language everywhere, a sort of fold in the membrane that has established itself in a thousand metaphors, got itself most unwarrantably taken for granted by nearly everybody.

   • 1953 June, B. D. J. Walsh, “Branch Lines to Thetford”, in Railway Magazine, page 375:

     In the following year, however, a contract for the remainder of the line was concluded, and the directors issued a most unwarrantably optimistic report on the prospects of their undertaking.

Related terms

• unwarrantability
• unwarrantableness
• unwarranted
• unwarrantedly

References

• unwarrantably in An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828.
• “unwarrantably”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.