shrewdly

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Middle English schrewed

Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der.

Proto-Germanic *līkąder.

Proto-Germanic *-līkaz

Proto-Germanic *-ê

Proto-Germanic *-līkê

Proto-West Germanic *-līkē

Old English -līċe

Middle English -ly

Middle English schrewedly

English shrewdly

Inherited from Middle English schrewedly (“wickedly, harshly”). By surface analysis, shrewd + -ly.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɹuːdliː/

Adverb

shrewdly (comparative more shrewdly, superlative most shrewdly)

1. In a shrewd manner.
   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0056:

     Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

Translations

in a shrewd manner

• Czech: chytře (cs)
• Finnish: ovelasti (fi), terävästi (fi)
• French: astucieusement (fr), avec perspicacité
• German: geschickt (de)
• Italian: scaltramente (it), astutamente (it)
• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: bijîrî (ku), jîrkî (ku)

• Middle English: sleighly
• Polish: chytrze (pl)
• Portuguese: astutamente (pt)
• Spanish: astutamente, con perspicacia
• Swedish: klokt (sv)