weakly
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈwiːkli/
- Rhymes: -iːk.li
- Homophone: weekly
Etymology 1
From weak + -ly; compare Old English wāclīċ (“weak; ignoble; mean”), and Old Norse veikligr (“weakly; sick”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkaz (“weakly; weak”).
Adjective
weakly (comparative weaklier, superlative weakliest)
- Frail, sickly or of a delicate constitution; weak.
- 1885, Sir Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 18:
- I lay in weakly case and confined to my bed for four months before I was able to rise and health returned to me.
- 1889, WB Yeats, The Ballad of Moll Magee:
- I'd always been but weakly, / And my baby was just born; / A neighbour minded her by day, / I minded her till morn.
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob's Room:
- "Oh, a huge crab," Jacob murmured—and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom.
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Derived terms
- weaklily
- weakliness
Etymology 2
From Middle English weykly, equivalent to weak + -ly. Compare Old High German weihlīcho (“weakly”), Middle English wocliche, wokli, wacliche (both from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkō).
Adverb
weakly (comparative more weakly, superlative most weakly)
- With little strength or force.
Derived terms
- super weakly interacting massive particle
- ultraweakly
- weakly cardinal
- weakly contractible
- weakly interacting massive particle
- weakly symmetric matter
- weakly-typed
Translations
with little strength or force
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