lordly

English

Adjective

lordly (comparative lordlier or more lordly, superlative lordliest or most lordly)

1. (obsolete) of or relating to a lord.

   Show us your lordly might, demonstrate that you can order people and get them to obey.

2. Appropriate for, or suitable to, a lord.
   • 1849 — Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, chapter 27

     It had also its Hall, called the Priory - an older, a larger, a more lordly abode than any Briarfield or Whinbury owned;

   • 1897 — Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 27

     There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest.

Adverb

lordly (comparative lordlier, superlative lordliest)

1. In the manner of a lord. Showing command or nobility.
   • 1891, Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of the World: Or, The Great Consummation,^[1] Book I — “Mary Magdalene”, Funk & Wagnalls, page 56,

     […] / And Herod's painted pinnaces, ablaze / With lamps, and brazen shields and spangled slaves, / Came and went lordly at Tiberias; / […]

   • 1925, Claude Kean, Stock Charges Against the Bible^[2], published 2003, page 61:

     Look at man, then, walking lordly amidst the gigantic flora and fauna of long ago; and see if seven, eight, nine hundred years do not sit serenely on his mighty brow.

Anagrams

• drolly