naïfly

English

Adverb

naïfly (comparative more naïfly, superlative most naïfly)

1. Alternative form of naively
   • 1846, Social Influences: or Villiers, volume III, London: T. C. Newby, page 228:

     Lord Camell rattled constantly across—it preying excessively upon his fancies, that Emile should so let the “saison” slip-by—naïfly expounding, “there was a time for all things”—stoutly asseverating, an occasional “scurry with the D⸺s” must eminently brace the moral tone of the understanding—and plighting himself to wholly forswear hunting, till gratified by the comradeship of his ancient brother of the chase.

   • 1887 October 1, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 64, number 1,666, page 443:

     Not the least curious incident connected with this Nizam matter is the naïf and naïfly expressed vexation of the Irish Nationalist papers.

   • 1911, Walter Larden, Argentine Plains and Andine Glaciers: Life on an Estancia, and an Expedition Into the Andes, page 234:

     There was a strong element of the child in this wild-looking fellow; and now he appeared most naïfly surprised and pleased to find that he was so clever as to be able to help in surveying-work.

   • 1915, Woodrow Wilson, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson: July 21-September 30, 1915, published 1980, page 17:

     Most of them are nonsense or mare’s nests, but now and then a profound secret slips out as naïfly as a child sometimes reveals a family skeleton.

   • 1917 January, H. L. Mencken, “Suffering among Books”, in The Smart Set, volume LI, number 1, page 266:

     Nevertheless, all this merited respect for an industrious and inoffensive man is bound, soon or late, to yield to a critical examination of the artist within, and that examination, I fear, will have its bitter moments for those who naïfly accept the current Howells legend.

   • 1925, Inez Haynes Irwin, Gertrude Haviland’s Divorce, page 243:

     They stood looking at each other for a moment. Curt Franklin’s eyes naïfly revealing his pleasure, and Gertrude consciously enjoying that revelation.

   • 1925, The Oxford Outlook, page 102:

     Harold was pertinacious if not determined in this doubtful enterprise, so naïfly undertaken.

   • 1926, Sotheran’s Price Current of Literature, page 27:

     ‘For the Common Good of Ireland, and more especially of the Adventurers and Planters’, is a naïfly characteristic specimen of Parliamentary cant.

   • 1929, I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment, New York, N.Y.: Harvest Books, Harcourt, Brace and Company, page 170:

     This “poem” is a storm brewed amongst sodden Typhoo-tips, in the dregs of a cracked Woolworth tea-cup, by an incorrigible moral charlatan, simpleton, or bore,—who has become immune from self-criticism through the public acceptance, nem con., of a piously truistic diffuseness which easily flatters and cozens the naĭfly self-regarding morale of a society in part too simple, in part intolerably smug.

   • 1943, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, page 66:

     For nothing is easier than to make one naïfly formed Morality the vantage point from which others are criticised.

   • 1943 May 12, Claude Fredericks, The Journal of Claude Fredericks, volume three, part one (Cambridge (1943)), Xlibris, published 2011, page 591:

     He was almost naïfly delighted that Pat Conway had sent him a birthday card.

   • 1947, Ted Shawn, How Beautiful Upon the Mountain: A History of Jacob’s Pillow, page 10:

     That first summer we were quite isolated and undisturbed, as no publicity had attended my buying and living at Jacob’s Pillow up to that time (I, naïfly, thinking it would always be used as a “retreat”).

   • 1972, Adam International Review, page 53:

     To this day I am unable to think of M. de Charlus as anything but a man I should have loathed or to refrain from rejoicing naïfly in his discomfiture chez les Verdurins.

   • 1991, Hungarian Studies in English, page 111:

     […] Starbuck who joins the Communist party in his youth, but instead of dramatically changing the way society operates economically or socially, sends his best friend to jail when he naïfly names him as a known communist before Nixon’s Congressional Investigating Committee.