English edit

Etymology edit

attracting +‎ -ly

Adverb edit

attractingly (comparative more attractingly, superlative most attractingly)

  1. In such a way as to attract.
    • 1618, Michael Baret, An Hipponomie or the Vineyard of Horsemanship, London, prefatory letter to Book 2,[1]
      [] the Osmund or Magneticall stone [] hath the two Poles (the one of them being of contrary qualitie to the other) the Axis, Equator, Meridians, Parallels, and so all the other Circles naturally and sensibly, as are imagined or fained to bee in the Heauens. All which the directory or inclinatory needles, will attractingly deliniate by their conformity and vnion, at conuenient Angles,
    • 1777, Samuel Jackson Pratt, Charles and Charlotte[2], London: William Lane, Volume 1, Letter 26, p. 117:
      The beauties of your Charlotte, both mental and bodily, are indeed too attractingly eminent to be easily worn from the memory of a man, who hath not only possess’d, but so greatly contributed to polish them.
    • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda[3], London: William Blackwood, Volume 4, Book 7, Chapter 54, p 103:
      In this critical view of mankind there was an affinity between him and Gwendolen before their marriage, and we know that she had been attractingly wrought upon by the refined negations he presented to her.
    • 1910, Georgina Binnie-Clark, chapter 16, in A Summer on the Canadian Prairie[4], London: Edward Arnold, pages 212–213:
      There is a mystery about wheat which grows deeper and stronger as one shares its life. [] It is more attractingly, hungrily alive than any fruit or even flower of the field, and the voice of its claim is to be felt in the field and not in the granary.
    • 2005, Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life[5], New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Part 1, p. 50:
      The mother-of-pearl sheen casually attractingly flashed as the dull dark plumage catches the sun;