illy
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adverb
[edit]illy (comparative more illy, superlative most illy)
- Badly; poorly.
- 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
- The domestic presence of Lucy had begun to produce a remarkable effect upon Pierre. Sometimes, to the covertly watchful eye of Isabel, he would seem to look upon Lucy with an expression illy befitting their singular and so-supposed merely cousinly relation; […]
- 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 132:
- Nor was this less ominous than the rattle of musketry, for it suggested but a single solution to the little band of rescuers—that the illy garrisoned village had already succumbed to the onslaught of a superior force.