Villainly

adj, adv

adj, adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Characteristic of a villain.

    "By the ox of St. Luke, thou idle, cogging knave—thou rascally, miscreant spy, if ever I catch thee dogging my footsteps, by day or night, or concerning thyself in any way about act of mine, I will think no more of drawing my dagger across thy villainly throat, than I would of slicing a melon or cucumber at my luncheon."

Adverb
  1. 1
    In the manner of a villain.

    "And whan they vnderstode this they walked fast, & cam nigħ to the bridge, and sawe thre cristen that were 28 ouerthrawen on the bridge by strokkes of speerys. ‘Fourth,’ said then one of them, ‘we tary to longe perceyue you not how this Dogges oppressen vylaynly these valyaunt & worthy crystens?’ and anone they 32 bended þeir crosbowes, & shot ałł ones and ouerthrewe doun on the bridge fro theire horses with that first shotte xxiiᵗⁱ paynemys."

Example

More examples

"By the ox of St. Luke, thou idle, cogging knave—thou rascally, miscreant spy, if ever I catch thee dogging my footsteps, by day or night, or concerning thyself in any way about act of mine, I will think no more of drawing my dagger across thy villainly throat, than I would of slicing a melon or cucumber at my luncheon."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From villain + -ly.

Etymology 2

From Middle English vilenly; equivalent to villain + -ly.

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