English

Adverb

fixedly ‎(comparative more fixedly, superlative most fixedly)

1. In a fixed manner: steadily, without shifting one's gaze.
   • 1748, John Cleland, Fanny Hill, Letter the First, Part 1,

     She look'd as if she would devour me with her eyes, staring at me from head to foot, without the least regard to the confusion and blushes her eyeing me so fixedly put me to, and which were to her, no doubt, the strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.

   • 1897, H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapter 2,

     He felt alone in the room and looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of them.

   • 1927, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Chapter 7,

     By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped.

2. In a fixed manner: unchangingly, without changing one's expression.
   • 1989, Carol Shields, "Chemistry" in The Collected Stories, Toronto: Random House Canada, 2004, p. 238,

     Rhonda is smiling fixedly.

3. Firmly, resolutely.
   • 1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Chapter III,

     He that considers how hardly sensation is, in our thoughts, reconcilable to extended matter; or existence to anything that has no extension at all, will confess that he is very far from certainly knowing what his soul is. It is a point which seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge: and he who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the soul's materiality.

   • 1913, Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, Chapter 2,

     I am by no means sure that [the rhinoceros] had fixedly hostile intentions, and indeed with my present experience I think it likely that if I had not fired it would have flinched at the last moment and either retreated or gone by me.

   • 1948, Christopher Addison, Hansard, 23 September, 1948,

     Our suggestion was rejected, I think I can fairly say, almost with scorn. However, we still remain fixedly of the opinion that it is an extremely reasonable suggestion.

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