Word.ws English Dictionary

wistly

wistly adverb: in an intent manner, with close attention; intently; attentively.

Adverb

wistly (comparative more wistly, superlative most wistly)

  1. (obsolete) In an intent manner, with close attention; intently; attentively.
    • … which makes him eye this gentlewoman a little more wistly …2007, Peter Marshall, Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A Ghost Story, Oxford Univ. Press, →ISBN

Forms of wistly

comparativemore wistly
superlativemost wistly

Origin of wistly

Possibly an alternative form of whistly, or whishtly (“quietly”). By surface analysis, whist (“silent, hushed”) + -ly.

Questions about wistly

What does wistly mean?
Wistly means in an intent manner, with close attention; intently; attentively.
What part of speech is wistly?
Wistly is an adverb.

Words near wistly in the dictionary

  1. wistfulnesses
  2. wisting
  3. wistiti
  4. wistitis
  5. wistless
  6. wistly
  7. Wiston
  8. wistonwish
  9. wistonwishes
  10. Wistow
  11. wists

Source and license

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