distinctlier

English

Adverb

distinctlier

1. (rare) comparative form of distinctly: more distinctly
   • 1805, Robert Southey, “Canto XVIII”, in Madoc, London: […] [F]or Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A[rchibald] Constable and Co, […], by James Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, part II (Madoc in Aztlan), page 356:

     […] / And, as they stretched him on the stone of blood, Did the huge trumpet of the God, with voice / Loud as the thunder-peal, and heard as far, / Proclaim the act of death, more visible / Than in broad day-light, by those midnight fires / Distinctlier seen.

   • 1834 November 22, Cymbeline [pseudonym], “Lines: On the destruction of both Houses of the British Parliament by fire, and the preservation of Westminster Hall and Abbey, October 16, a. d. 1834”, in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction: […], volume XXIV, number 692, London: […] J[ohn] Limbird, […], page 356, columns 1–2:

     Nor from the land / Less awful was the scene. Distinctlier there / We saw and heard with what hydraulic skill / The dreadless fireman combated the flame, / Unheedful he of peril.

   • 1840 March, Robert Browning, Sordello, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, book the sixth, pages 233–234:

     Then my own way / Bless me—a firmer arm, a fleeter foot, / I’ll thank you, but to no mad wings transmute / These limbs of mine—our greensward is too soft; / Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft— / We feel the bliss distinctlier having thus / Engines subservient, not mixed up with us— / Better move palpably through Heaven—nor, freed / Of flesh forsooth, from space to space proceed / ’Mid flying synods of worlds—but in Heaven’s marge / Show Titan still, recumbent o’er his targe / Solid with stars—the Centaur at his game / Made tremulously out in hoary flame!

   • 1854, [Charles Graham Halpine], “We Might Have Been”, in Lyrics by the Letter H, New York, N.Y.: J[ames] C[ephas] Derby, […]; Cincinnati, Oh.: H[enry] W. Derby, page 159:

     There is a whisper ringing clear / In every sleepless listener’s ear, / A whisper of but scanty cheer, / And heard distinctlier every year— / “You might have been—you might have been.”

   • 1873, Edgar Fawcett, Purple and Fine Linen. A Novel., G[eorge] W[ashington] Carleton & Co.; London: S[ampson] Low, Son & Co., page 404:

     Instead of that his hot hand suddenly seized mine and his dull-shining eyes swept my face for a moment, whilst he cried out, much loudlier and distinctlier than he had as yet spoken anything: “Edith! Ah, Edith, this is you at last. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

   • 1875 June, Sidney Lanier, “The Symphony”, in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume XV, Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott & Co., page 678:

     And then, as when our words seem all too rude / We cease from speech, to take our thought and brood / Back in our heart’s great dark and solitude, / So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing, / Of long chords change-marked with sobbing— / Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard / Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, / Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.

   • 1890 December 31, “Atcha! A Sternutation in Six Explosions. III.”, in Fun, volume LII, number 1338, London: […] W. Lay, […], page 283, column 2:

     “Go,” she said, coldlier, distinctlier than ever she has spoken.

   • 1894 April, Richard Burton, “When the Sap Runs Up in the Trees. A Spring Fantasy.”, in The New England Magazine, volume X, number 2, Boston, Mass., page 221, column 2:

     If one be a veritable worshipper of Pan, may not the murmur of the sap running up in the trees be heard, distinctlier the more of love is in the soul?

   • 1898, Richard Burton, “Washington Irving’s Services to American History”, in Literary Likings, Boston, Mass.: Copeland and Day, page 270:

     Still another quality which goes to make Irving pleasant as well as profitable reading, and which we may call characteristic of the literary man rather than of the historian, is his humor. This is not confined to the Knickerbocker History and lightsome sketches like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but plays like heat lightning about the graver books, with a gentle lambency which makes them distinctlier remembered and longer enjoyed.

   • 1911, Rupert Brooke, uncompleted poem, in Robert Brainard Pearsall, Rupert Brooke: The Man and Poet, Amsterdam: Rodopi N.V., published 1974, →ISBN, page 85:

     Who knows by what [space left blank] shore / The master Phantast dreamed and strayed / Till the low light grew strange and more, / And in the gloaming, half-afraid, / Against what dim volcanoes’ murk, / He saw the immortal masses stir, / Frenziedly gather [left blank] and jerk / Coagulate distinctlier, / Clutch at their Cosmos, shape and rise / Stiffening towards unheard-of skies, / In frozen stream stand stricken, blue, / Inenarrable?

   • 1929 June 1, A. Romney Green, “Columbus”, in Wessex: An Annual Record of the Movement for a University of Wessex, volume I, number 2, Southampton, Hants.: University College, Southampton, part II, page 21:

     —Astern the spikes of rose and aureate dawn, before / In a blue sea there glows—a boundless sea no more— / Distinctlier shapes and grows yon white and verdant shore.

   • 1984, Joy Littell, editor, Building English Skills: Red Level (The McDougal, Litell English Program), Evanston, Ill.: McDougal, Littell & Company, →ISBN, page 449:

     For each sentence choose the correct form. […] Speak (distinctlier, more distinctly), please.

   • 2001, Language & Sentence Skills Practice: Support for the Holt Handbook (Holt Literature & Language Arts: Fourth Course), Austin, Tex.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, →ISBN, page 203:

     Most of the following sentences contain an error in the use of a modifier. […] Why didn’t you answer distinctlier?