Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a grinding manner; cruelly; oppressively.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb colloq. In a grinding manner.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a grinding fashion; in a way that grinds

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

grinding +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • Rather, they facilitate a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity.

    The New Yorker on the underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs. - Boing Boing 2009

  • Okay, so I can still write novels, I just have to work a grindingly depressive day job until they bury me in the cold, cold ground.

    Philip Roth gives novel a quarter of a century 2009

  • The character is a Gallic cliché bereft of fresh ideas, while the actor is hobbled by editing rhythms—and very likely by directorial choices—that put a premium on long glowers, pregnant pauses and chases that, for all their ostensible energy, grow grindingly repetitive.

    'Hugo': A Dazzler, but No Victor Joe Morgenstern 2011

  • Monday's matchup between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama in college football's national-championship game has sparked a mild debate over whether these two teams—whose meeting earlier this season resulted in a grindingly dull 9-6 LSU victory—are the best possible pairing.

    When Football Is an Economic Strategy Rachel Bachman 2012

  • In "Reading," Mr. Yu describes his boyhood eagerness to find something to read other than "grindingly dull accounts of class struggle."

    Cultural Lexicon Melanie Kirkpatrick 2011

  • Already grindingly destructive and violent, the 11-month long Syrian crisis has suddenly turned worse.

    Syria: Russia on the wrong side | Editorial 2012

  • Peppered with spectacular vistas and unsettling set-pieces, Dead Space 2 grafts significantly more character and plot on to its central conceit of necromorph de-limbing, making this feel far more polished and less grindingly depressing than the first outing.

    This week's new games 2011

  • "Next summer our combat troops will leave Iraq itself and we will be on track to remove all U.S. forces from Iraq at the end of 2011," he said, speaking in the confines of the palace, a contrast to the searingly hot, grindingly dusty and always dangerous Iraqi streets.

    Biden on July Fourth: Swearing in troops, cursing 'S.O.B.' Saddam 2009

  • Along the road, a shipment of VWs is being unloaded, grindingly, from a transporter.

    Alan Sugar ? the lord of all he surveys Sabine Durrant 2010

  • The test is yet to come in Kentucky, where Republican Senate candidate and "tea party" favorite Rand Paul has talked of weaning the grindingly poor eastern off its dependence on government.

    In Alabama, Rep. Bobby Bright avoids perils of anti-government mood 2010

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