Word.ws English Dictionary

frightly

frightly adjective: frightful; dreadful.

Adjective

frightly (comparative more frightly, superlative most frightly)

  1. Frightful; dreadful.
  2. 1880, Allen Putnam, Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism, page 404
  3. "His wives" (he had buried two) had privately complained unto the neighbors about frightly apparitions of evil spirits with which their house was sometimes infested; and many such things had been whispered among the neighborhood."
  4. 2013, Neils Axt, ChronoTales, page 15
  5. And they were the first, arriving at frightly matrimonial junction long before their high school classmates had seriously considered such options.
  6. 2022, Garry Boulard, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant: Their Epic Battle
  7. A more frightly scene was scarcely ever witnessed,” Cadwallader observed.

Adverb

frightly (comparative more frightly, superlative most frightly)

  1. In a frightful or dreadful manner.
  2. 2025, Brett O'Conor, The Butcher
  3. The Kentucky Fright Chicken. They are frightly good!

Forms of frightly

Adjective
comparativemore frightly
superlativemost frightly
Adverb
comparativemore frightly
superlativemost frightly

Origin of frightly

From fright + -ly.

Questions about frightly

What does frightly mean?
Frightly means frightful; dreadful.
What part of speech is frightly?
Frightly can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near frightly in the dictionary

  1. frightfulness
  2. frightfulnesses
  3. frighting
  4. frightings
  5. frightless
  6. frightly
  7. frightmare
  8. frightmares
  9. frightment
  10. frights
  11. frightsome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frightly (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.

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