Examples
“Flawed, certainly - a writer can't get away with that kind of archly self-conscious style these days, let alone the heavily didactic tone - but his dog characters, the stoical Rowf and the psychotic terrier Snitter, whose botched brain surgery has rendered him both mad and prophetic, are an unforgettable pair, and we share each nail-biting moment of their journey.”
“She said it archly, meaning to suggest that Dick might be jealous.”
“And a body to fix them in, and tanks for oil and petrol, and a tail, and, "archly," one of those dashing young Pilots, what? ”
“The aesthetic that appreciates kitsch is partly ironic, involving a sort of archly detached amusement.”
“A bit like those curling posters of the Pope smoking a joint that adorned teenage walls in the 1980s, nothing says "I'm 15, white and middle class" like smirking archly in a Nike Get High T-shirt as your mum drops you off at the Richmond Park half-pipe.”
The Guardian: Get High: Why Nike got hooked on dope | Marina Hyde
“I giggled archly, wiggling deeper into his embrace.”
“Auster coyly celebrates the power of the imagination and marvels over the labyrinthine nature of the mind in an archly playful and shrewdly philosophical tribute to the transcendence of stories.”
“Mr. Jiang was greeted by large, noisy demonstrations everywhere he went, and Mr. Clinton archly noted during a freewheeling joint press conference that China's authoritarian government was on "the wrong side of history.”
The Wall Street Journal: An American Message for the Chinese President
“His father, Luther Cain Jr., moved the family from Memphis to archly segregated Atlanta in the late 1940s, when Herman Cain was two years old.”
“The heart of the conflict was an archly conflicting view of filial responsibility: Should parents serve children?”
The Huffington Post: George Heymont: Clowning Around: The Circus of Life
Lists
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Noelle Knight "'Oh?' I said archly, in an attempt to lighten the mood." -Club Dead, by Charlaine Harris Feb 5, 2011
seanahan Another one of the many words I picked up while reading David Eddings. It means roguish, playfully mischievous, all with what I determine to be a slight connotation of sensuality. Jul 6, 2007