aboriginally

English

Etymology

aboriginal +‎ -ly

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌæb.əˌɹɪd͡ʒ.n̩.ə.li/, /ˌæb.əˌɹɪd͡ʒ.ɪn.ə.li/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Adverb

aboriginally (not comparable)

1. From or in the earliest known times. [First attested in the early 19th century.]
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 58, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     […] man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

   • 1868, Charles Darwin, chapter 2, in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, pages [https://archive.org/details/NHM_UK_L_2631475001 52-53]:

     […] aboriginally the horse must have inhabited countries annually covered with snow, for he long retains the instinct of scraping it away to get at the herbage beneath.

   • 2006, Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within‎^[1], New York: Gotham, Part 2, Chapter 2, p. 145:

     […] music, like verse, can do rhythm but it is only poetry that can yoke words together in rhyme (sometimes, of course, and aboriginally, at the service of music).

2. In the period before contact with Europeans (especially with reference to peoples subjected to colonization).
   • 1896, Allan Eric, “Buckra” Land: Two Weeks in Jamaica‎^[2], Boston, Appendix:

     Xaymaca, as the island was aboriginally known, is situated in the Caribbean Sea […]

   • 1973, Charles F. Hockett, chapter 31, in Man’s Place in Nature,‎^[3], New York: McGraw-Hill, page 523:

     […] in the New World, where pots were never aboriginally shaped by turning, wheeled vehicles also were absent […]

   • 1986, Robert L. Blakely, David S. Mathews, “What Price Civilization?”, in Miles Richardson, Malcolm C. Webb, editors, The Burden of Being Civilized: An Anthropological Perspective on the Discontents of Civilization‎^[4], Athens: University of Georgia Press, page 12:

     The question is, was the disease [tuberculosis] present aboriginally in the New World, or was it introduced to Native Americans by European explorers?

3. (Canada) By indigenous Canadians (often capitalized in this sense). [First attested in the 1980s.]
   • 1987, Kate Irving, What Government Does in the Western Northwest Territories, Yellowknife: Western Constitutional Forum,^[5]

     All land subject to the claim becomes either Crown land or aboriginally-owned land.

   • 1991, Jim Harding, An Annotated Bibliography of Aboriginal-controlled Justice Programs in Canada, Prairie Justice Research, School of Human Justice, University of Regina, p. 80,^[6]

     It appears that lack of funding and control led to the demise of this program, but that with further refinement the idea has merit especially within an Aboriginally-controlled justice system.

   • 2002, Bradford W. Morse and Robert K. Groves, “Métis and Non-status Indians and Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867 in Paul L.A.H. Chartrand (ed.), Who Are Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples? Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, pp. 209-210,^[7]

     These areas […] relate to the identity of Aboriginally predominant communities.

4. To the utmost degree (modifying an adjective).

   Synonyms: absolutely, thoroughly, utterly

   • 1920, Greville MacDonald, The Sanity of William Blake‎^[8], London: George Allen and Unwin, page 24:

     Though his rage against iniquity is aboriginally simple and childlike, and is certainly not always level-headed, it is never divorced from reason […]

   • 1931, G. K. Chesterton, “Dickens at Christmas”, in Marie Smith, editor, The Spirit of Christmas: Stories, Poems, Essays‎^[9], New York: Dodd, Mead, published 1985, page 77:

     There is something aboriginally absurd in the idea of the old gentleman staring wild-eyed at his own legs; and half recalling something familiar about them; as if he were revisiting the landscape of his youth.

   • 1978, Iris Murdoch, chapter 3, in The Sea, the Sea‎^[10], London: Chatto & Windus, pages 181–182:

     Dried apricots eaten with cake should be soaked and simmered first, eaten with cheese they should be aboriginally dry.

   • 2005, Bella Bathurst, chapter 5, in The Wreckers‎^[11], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 152:

     […] those travellers who did make the trip [to the Western Isles] returned with stories which made Scotland and the Scots sound as aboriginally exotic as shark-eating Eskimos or man-eating pygmies.