noddingly

English

Etymology

nodding +‎ -ly

Adverb

noddingly (comparative more noddingly, superlative most noddingly)

1. With a nodding motion, possibly expressing agreement.
2. To a very minor degree; slightly.
   • 1938, Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature: From Confucius' Day to Our Own, →ISBN, page 692:

     You could name ten thousand goodish books that you might, without any pressing necessity, noddingly know; you might name a hundred authors that cultured persons would be expected to talk about.

   • 1990, Sylvia Field Porter, Sylvia Porter's your finances in the 1990s, page 25:

     You may find in the first few months that your budgeted estimates are only noddingly close to your actual expenses.

   • 1991, Robert A. Solo, Opportunity Knocks: American Economic Policy After Gorbachev, →ISBN:

     In the primary and secondary schools, the student is taught the rudiments of literacy and arithmetic; is introduced to history and literature; acquires the beginner's skills in mathematics; is noddingly acquainted with science; and in general, is given a perspective on the modern world and of his and her place in it.

   • 2015, Peter Sabor, The Cambridge Companion to ‘Emma', →ISBN, page 29:

     Emma may claim to have copied that very poem out of Elegant Extracts, but Austen herself, and any reader even noddingly familiar with the anthology, would have known that David Garrick's 'A Riddle' from 1757 was far too saucy and laden with innuendo to have been admitted to Knox's edifying volume.