dumbly
/ˈdʌmli/
dumbly adverb: in a silent way.
Adverb
dumbly (comparative more dumbly, superlative most dumbly)
- In a silent way.
- On the flat behind the mill, dawn-rising Chinamen shogged with nimble bare feet under their yoke-linked watering-cans. These busy brethren, meeting sometimes on the same narrow track, would pause, ant-like, seemingly to dumbly regard one another and their burdens, then, still ant-like, pass...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 147
- I handed it dumbly to my friend, who had the grace to giggle.1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 32
- Synonyms:
- silently
- In an unsmart way.
Examples of dumbly in a sentence
- These busy brethren, meeting sometimes on the same narrow track, would pause, ant-like, seemingly to dumbly regard one another and their burdens, then, still ant-like, pass silently to their work.1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia...
- We both stared at it dumbly, wondering why she had done such a thing, when suddenly something remarkable began to happen.1991, Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, page 156:
Synonyms of dumbly
Forms of dumbly
| comparative | more dumbly |
|---|---|
| superlative | most dumbly |
Origin of dumbly
From dumb + -ly.
Words that rhyme with dumbly
Questions about dumbly
- What does dumbly mean?
- Dumbly means in a silent way.
- How do you use dumbly in a sentence?
- These busy brethren, meeting sometimes on the same narrow track, would pause, ant-like, seemingly to dumbly regard one another and their burdens, then, still ant-like, pass silently to their work.
- What part of speech is dumbly?
- Dumbly is an adverb.
- How do you pronounce dumbly?
- Dumbly is pronounced /ˈdʌmli/.
Words near dumbly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dumbly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-dumbly.wav.
Cite this entry: “dumbly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dumbly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.