Word.ws English Dictionary

gamely

gamely adjective: sportive; lively; joyful.

Adjective

gamely (comparative gamelier or more gamely, superlative gameliest or most gamely)

  1. Sportive; lively; joyful.
    • That's what I wanted: a challenging race, a gamely fight.2004, David Unger, Life in the damn tropics: a novel
    • This confirmed the penetration of the theoretical knowledge of color when it is taught using a gamely practice where the act of working come to be a pleasure.2004, Jose Luis Caivano, editor, AIC 2004 Color and Paints, Proceedings
  2. (usually) Of or pertaining to game.
    • The black bass was strongly recommended as a gamely creature and as excellent for the table, and it was put into Meeting-house Pond.1893, William Sweetzer Heywood, History of Westminster, Massachusetts

Adverb

gamely (comparative more gamely, superlative most gamely)

  1. In a game or plucky manner; in a willing and spirited fashion.
    • Stoke pressed gamely but clear chances were few and Fulham held on to record a first away league win in 16 months.2010 December 28, Marc Vesty, “Stoke 0 - 2 Fulham”, in BBC
    • Many of the other boats cut in, with their radios, to cheer Dick on, while he gamely fought the huge fish. The monster was continually stripping line off the reel, as Dick fought gamely; reeling for all he was worth!2011, Harry Grigsby, Key Largo Adventures

Examples of gamely in a sentence

  • "Would by chance your friend be a pale looking sort with a gamely laugh?" Sterling drew his head back.2005, Ross Eddy Osborn, Thorns of a Tainted Rose:
  • Here was a sober young Harlemite in a gamely tilted bowler with a little French mustache.2011, Amor Towles, Rules of Civility:
  • But her belief in the fruits of that labor[…]means that she will gamely take whatever licks and praise might come with being in charge and trying to stay on the cutting edge.2022 March 17, Joe Coscarelli, “Rosalía Reserves the Right to Transform”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

Synonyms of gamely

Forms of gamely

Adjective
comparativegamelier
comparativemore gamely
superlativegameliest
superlativemost gamely
Adverb
comparativemore gamely
superlativemost gamely

Origin of gamely

From game + -ly; compare Old English gamenlīċ (“belonging to games, sportive, theatrical, ridiculous”) and Middle High German gāmelich, gemelich (“joyful”).

Questions about gamely

What does gamely mean?
Gamely means sportive; lively; joyful.
How do you use gamely in a sentence?
"Would by chance your friend be a pale looking sort with a gamely laugh?" Sterling drew his head back.
What part of speech is gamely?
Gamely can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near gamely in the dictionary

  1. gamelike
  2. Gamelin
  3. Gamelion
  4. gamelotte
  5. Gamels
  6. gamely
  7. gamemaking
  8. gamemaster
  9. gamemastered
  10. gamemastering
  11. gamemasters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gamely (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-gamely.wav.

Cite this entry: “gamely.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gamely. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.