Word.ws English Dictionary

thingly

thingly adjective: pertaining to the substance of a work, separate from what is conveyed; material, substantive.

Adjective

thingly (comparative more thingly, superlative most thingly)

  1. Pertaining to the substance of a work, separate from what is conveyed; material, substantive.
    • All works have this thingly character.2009, Donald Preziosi, The art of art history: a critical anthology
  2. Actual; real; substantial.

Forms of thingly

comparativemore thingly
superlativemost thingly

Origin of thingly

From Middle English thingli, þingly; equivalent to thing + -ly. For sense development, compare Latin reālis.

Words formed from thingly

Questions about thingly

What does thingly mean?
Thingly means pertaining to the substance of a work, separate from what is conveyed; material, substantive.
What part of speech is thingly?
Thingly is an adjective.

Words near thingly in the dictionary

  1. thinglets
  2. Thingley
  3. thinglike
  4. thinglikeness
  5. thingliness
  6. thingly
  7. thingmabob
  8. thingmabobs
  9. thingmajig
  10. thingman
  11. thingmen

Source and license

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