noiselessly - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Proto-Indo-European *lewHs-der.

Proto-West Germanic *-laus

Middle English -les

English noiselessly

From noiseless + -ly.

noiselessly (not comparable)

  1. In a quiet manner, without any noise.
    • 1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 127:
      Noiselessly she laid the clematis and wattle on her bed, then stood near the covered face, and, looking down at her untied bootlaces, sighed an impatient sigh always well known and understood by this now unresponsive father.
    • 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as chapter 5, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC:
      Not thirty paces behind the two she crouched--Sabor, the huge lioness--lashing her tail. Cautiously she moved a great padded paw forward, noiselessly placing it before she lifted the next. Thus she advanced; her belly low, almost touching the surface of the ground--a great cat preparing to spring upon its prey.
    • 1918, Robert Louis Stevenson, “I now, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows”, in New Poems, Chatto & Windus, page 101:
      I now, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows / Settle around, and whose small chamber grows / Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:
    • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
      The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.

in a quiet manner

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