wordly

wordly adjective: of, relating to, or resembling a word; verbal.

Adjective

wordly (comparative more wordly, superlative most wordly)

(rare) Of, relating to, or resembling a word; verbal.
- But I feel an impulse to scribble wordly words, to stand in a silk hat beside the statue of Liberty and gaze out upon the Atlantic with a Carlylian pensiveness.1921, Ben Hecht, Erik Dorn - Page 248
- "The reality of the wordly words as the word of God is not pneumatologically grounded by Calvin — neither is the church proclaimed word in virtue of its power of divine ordinance a word of God's Spirit imparted for all times, nor is it made more and more God's word through the Holy Spirit—[...]1970, Benjamin Charles Milner, Calvin's Doctrine of the Church - Page 105

I have, in other words, "talked" about the nonverbal in a "wordly" way.1993, William H. Poteat, James M. Nickell, James W. Stines, The Primacy of Persons and the Language of Culture: Essays:
We notice here a shift from 'literal' in a wordly sense (cf. the German wörtlich), pertaining to written words as such, to a descriptive sense, pertaining to how a text (or the world) is understood.2008, Manuel Dries, Nietzsche on Time and History - Page 157:

comparative	more wordly
superlative	most wordly

From word + -ly. Compare Dutch woordelijk, German wörtlich.

What does wordly mean?: Wordly means of, relating to, or resembling a word; verbal.
How do you use wordly in a sentence?: I have, in other words, "talked" about the nonverbal in a "wordly" way.
What part of speech is wordly?: Wordly is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: wordly (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: 2026-09-02

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