Why do I feel the need to add a second "-ly" to adjectives already ending in "-ly" when abverbializing them? […] "Don't worry about it," she reassured him motherlily.
Source: wiktionary
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
6 total sentences available.
Why do I feel the need to add a second "-ly" to adjectives already ending in "-ly" when abverbializing them? […] "Don't worry about it," she reassured him motherlily.
Source: wiktionary
For a long minute they embraced, as though mother and child, each needing the other. Moneeq, now down on one knee, looked Nick motherlily in the eye.
Source: wiktionary
When you see Joyous beam, you beam. Bart beams warmly. […] The shape of his gonads must set the ambit of his emotions? No. Fathers worry about the little bugger’s sport’s prowess. What Bart feels like is mother. He notices that the more orthodoxly mother-type person next to him is not beaming motherlily. She is not beaming at all. Her mouth is set like the wardress of Belsen wishing to boil Joyous’s chubby cheeks into candle wax.
Source: wiktionary
Ghostlily, motherlily, manlily, beastlily are all dictionary-approved but prohibitively awkward, as is, in another way, lily-liveredly, Likylikely, though . . . […] In American English, at least, there seems to be no way to say something along these lines: “For the nine months I carried you, growing inside me, no charge,” Tammy Wynette sang motherlily.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.