Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. In a human way.
- adv. Within the scope of human means, capabilities, or powers: not humanly possible.
- adv. According to human experience or knowledge: Humanly speaking, the recession was not severe.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In a human manner; after the manner of men; according to human knowledge or belief: as, humanly speaking, it is impossible.
- Kindly; humanely.
Wiktionary
- adv. In a human manner.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adv. In a human manner; after the manner of men; according to the knowledge or wisdom of men.
- adv. obsolete Kindly; humanely.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. in the manner of human beings
Examples
“Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe Cheever: the problem that Kedzie was going to seem to solve -- as one solves any problem humanly, which is by substituting one or more new problems in place of the old.”
“I don't know why it shouldn't make me -- humanly, which is what we're speaking of -- as right as it makes you.”
“All this is quite as naturally and "humanly" conceived and written on St Paul's part as anything that I or my reader ever wrote about joys and griefs, our own or of our friends.”
Philippian Studies Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians
“The local police catch them and give them rabies shots, shoot a plastic tag into their ears and 'humanly' release them back into the 'wild'.”
TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
“It had pleased her "humanly", she told Mr Verini, adding "but ...".”
“I want, in other words, to speak about religious faith as a process of educating our vision and educating our passions; educating our vision so that we understand how to see that we don't see, how to see behind surfaces, the depth that we're not going to master; educating our passions in the sense of helping us to grow up 'humanly' in such a way that we don't take fright at this strangeness and mysteriousness and run away for all we're worth.”
'What Difference Does it Make?' - The Gospel in Contemporary Culture
“If you were to do so, you would have to do it responsibly and with as much love for all concerned—including your wife—as humanly possible.”
“I fought every urge to run at him in a blind frenzy, tearing his eyes out, biting off his ears, any savage thing I could humanly think of.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘humanly’.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for humanly.
seanahan I've never that usage of humanly before, but I've also never read Kierkegaard. Mar 31, 2009
vanishedone Contrasted with speaking technically/dispassionately: 'Or what was it Abraham did for the universal? Let me speak humanly about it, really humanly!' (Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay). Mar 30, 2009
seanahan Is this the kind of word that is almost always used colloquially? Also, has anyone heard this in a positive context? That is, "remembering ten thousand digits of pi is humanly possible". Mar 30, 2009
rolig I think I understand, though it's surprising that the adjective humanly has appeared so rarely since Caxton, for it follows the same pattern as godly, womanly, and manly, and indeed, the adjectival suffix -ly seems fairly productive, e.g. a person can act in a doctorly manner; one may look for cousinly support; a woman may show wifely devotion; members of the Religious Society of Friends encourage Quakerly behavior; etc. Mar 13, 2009
chained_bear That Caxton. What a guy. Mar 12, 2009
qroqqa 'New to the dictionary' refers to the adjective, which is only attested from Caxton:
1481 CAXTON tr. Hist. Reynard Fox (1970) 69 Whan a man doth amys And thenne by counseyl amendeth it That is humaynly [Du. menschelic] And so ought he to doo.
The adverb is a different, long-established word. Mar 12, 2009
reesetee "Met Abraham"? I love it! *plans to use this phrase frequently*
I guess that's what Mr. Diamond means by adding a "new" word that's already old. Mar 12, 2009
rolig Strange. I'm sure I have been hearing people use the phrase "humanly possible" all of my life (and I met Abraham passed 50 a couple of years ago, as Slovenes say). So is this really a "new" word? Mar 12, 2009
oroboros A new OED word. "...a good example of an old word that is new to the dictionary..." --Graeme Diamond, Principal Editor, New Words, Oxford English Dictionary Mar 12, 2009