Gruffly

adv

adv ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    In a gruff manner.

    "He was bearded, blunt, thickset, and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles. In his bourrue-bienfaisance, in his honesty, and in his brusque insuavity towards such as would compel his sympathy without justification, he was the very type of the dogmatic family doctor—of the gruffly practical allopathist of the old school."

Adverb
  1. 1
    in a gruff manner wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
abruptlycurtlyharshlyshortly

Example

More examples

"He was bearded, blunt, thickset, and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles. In his bourrue-bienfaisance, in his honesty, and in his brusque insuavity towards such as would compel his sympathy without justification, he was the very type of the dogmatic family doctor—of the gruffly practical allopathist of the old school."

Etymology

From gruff + -ly.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.