carefully
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English carfulli, carefulliche, from Old English carfullīċe, ċearfullīċe (“carefully, diligently”), equivalent to careful + -ly.
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkɛːfəli/, /ˈkɛːfli/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkɛɹfəli/, /ˈkɛɹfli/
Audio (GA) (file) - Hyphenation: care‧ful‧ly, caref‧ully
AdverbEdit
carefully (comparative more carefully, superlative most carefully)
- (obsolete) Sorrowfully.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- […] there was she faine / To call them all in order to her ayde, / And them conjure, upon eternall paine, / To counsell her, so carefully dismayd, / How she might heale her sonne […]
- With care; attentively, circumspectly.
- As he was a politician, he discussed all subjects carefully, not offending anyone. He carefully studied the papers, while planning his next move. He carefully avoided the subject all evening.
- 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], OCLC 2666860, page 0091:
- Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. ¶ There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
in a careful manner
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