Word.ws English Dictionary

rankly

rankly adverb: in a rank manner.

Adverb

rankly (comparative more rankly, superlative most rankly)

  1. In a rank manner.
    • Certainly no pages could seem to the censor more rankly blasphemous.1907, James George Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, page 22

Forms of rankly

comparativemore rankly
superlativemost rankly

Origin of rankly

From Middle English rankli, ronkly, from Old English ranclīċe (“showily; boldly”), equivalent to rank + -ly. Cognate with Icelandic rakklega (“boldly; valiantly”).

Questions about rankly

What does rankly mean?
Rankly means in a rank manner.
What part of speech is rankly?
Rankly is an adverb.

Words near rankly in the dictionary

  1. ranklessness
  2. rankleth
  3. rankling
  4. ranklingly
  5. ranklings
  6. rankly
  7. rankness
  8. ranknesses
  9. Ranko
  10. rankogram
  11. rankograms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rankly (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:

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