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FAINTLY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
To a faint degree or weakly perceived
Example:
the rumors weren't even faintly true
Classified under:
Pertainym:
faint (deficient in magnitude; barely perceptible; lacking clarity or brightness or loudness etc)
Context examples:
I noticed a black discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen’s eye, a mark of the thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
A small, faintly staining cell with scanty cytoplasm and rounded or polygonal contours.
(Chromophobe Cell, NCI Thesaurus)
A clear, transparent, sometimes faintly yellow and slightly opalescent fluid that is collected from the tissues throughout the body, flows in the lymphatic vessels (through the lymph nodes), and is eventually added to the venous blood circulation.
(Lymph, NCI Thesaurus)
Voices were heard faintly halloaing in the direction of the two gigs; and though this reassured us for Joyce and Hunter, who were well to the eastward, it warned our party to be off.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
She grew paler as she asked faintly:—Why?
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
“C. P. Barkis,” he cried faintly.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—"Where are you?
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He was squatting in the moss, a bone in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
