Word.ws English Dictionary

sparringly

sparringly adverb: as if sparring; in a combative manner.

Adverb

sparringly (comparative more sparringly, superlative most sparringly)

  1. As if sparring; in a combative manner.
    • There was a tense, angry silence as they faced each other sparringly in Abbey's dimly lit lounge, then Dalene hissed accusingly, 'You just don't care, do you?'1982, Yvonne Whittal, Bitter-Sweet Waters, page 144
    • Woolf makes subjective even her statement that human affairs are subjective; Russell sparringly equates mathematics with divinity.2015, Megan Quigley, Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language

Forms of sparringly

comparativemore sparringly
superlativemost sparringly

Origin of sparringly

From sparring + -ly.

Questions about sparringly

What does sparringly mean?
Sparringly means as if sparring; in a combative manner.
What part of speech is sparringly?
Sparringly is an adverb.

Words near sparringly in the dictionary

  1. sparrer
  2. sparrers
  3. sparres
  4. sparriness
  5. sparring
  6. sparringly
  7. sparrings
  8. sparrow
  9. Sparrow criterion
  10. Sparrow criterions
  11. sparrow dominoes

Source and license

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