ladyly

English

Adjective

ladyly (comparative more ladyly, superlative most ladyly)

1. Alternative spelling of ladily
   • 1833, “Philosophy of the Beau Monde”, in The Court Journal, London: […] Henry Colburn; […] W. Thomas, page 338:

     Sheridan (no less by birth than marriage degraded below the established standard) was eventually elevated as high as the breath of lordly and ladyly adulation could bear him.

   • 1840, “Advertisements and Advertisers”, in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1840, volume VII, Edinburgh: William Tait, […], page 385:

     We do not refer to the fashionable annuals, those very ineffable bulletins of lordly and ladyly inanity;

   • 1841, Albany Poyntz, “Diary of a Dining-Out Man”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume IX, London: Richard Bentley, page 288:

     They all looked affronted at being asked to meet each other; and every time the door opened, I saw them looking out anxiously for some lordly or ladyly arrival.

   • 1851, E[liza] Lynn, Realities: A Tale, volume I, London: Saunders and Otley, page 58:

     As Clara thus deteriorated—at least what Mr. and Mrs. de Saumarez called deterioration—becoming more concentrated in her mental turbulence, so to speak, and more vehement and impassioned every way, Alice improved so rapidly that the very servants learned to call her the “most ladyly” and the “best mistress of the two;” for servants are excellent judges of conventional breeding.

   • 1986, Ray B. Browne, Heroes and Humanities: Detective Fiction and Culture, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, →ISBN, page 3:

     In British mystery fiction the hero works for pay, because he is a part of the official police force or a private investigator; sometimes he or she works merely for gentlemanly or ladyly fun.

Adverb

ladyly (comparative more ladyly, superlative most ladyly)

1. Alternative spelling of ladily
   • 1842 February 10, The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836-1854, published 1983, page 349:

     I will be careful not to poison Flushie. He is growing so fine-ladyly delicate, that he expects, I believe, to be nourished upon macaroons & dews, or some such fairy dieting.

   • 1869, Franklin Fox, editor, Memoir of Mrs Eliza Fox. To Which Extracts Are Added from the Journals and Letters of Her Husband, the Late W. J. Fox M.P. for Oldham., London: N. Trübner & Co., page 90:

     On my asking if she did not admire the melody of his versification, she replied, very ladyly, that she did in all that she had read of his, which was only a few stray songs that had fallen in her way.

   • 1915, Notes and Queries, page 478:

     In short, it was a real folk-song, the work of the people, and the burden was either older, or was a corruption of “Dance over ladyly” (i.e., “dance forward gracefully”).

   • 1939, Time’s Wall Asunder, page 15:

     Riding their bicycles aflash ladies were ladyly abashed when frocks bob-bobbed and, ducking the breeze, went rippling back from their glossy knees.