Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Mainly
Main′ly
,adv.
[From
main
strong. See Main
strength.] Very strongly; mightily; to a great degree.
[Obs.]
Bacon. Shak.
Main′ly
,adv.
[From
main
principal, chief.] Principally; chiefly.
Webster 1828 Edition
Mainly
MA'INLY
,adv.
He is mainly occupied with domestic concerns.
1.
Greatly; to a great degree; mightily.Definition 2024
mainly
mainly
English
Adverb
mainly (not comparable)
- (obsolete) Forcefully, vigorously. [14th-17th c.]
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.i:
- Mainly they all attonce vpon him laid, / And sore beset on euery side around […].
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.i:
- (obsolete) Of the production of a sound: loudly, powerfully. [14th-19th c.]
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.31:
- But in the end, mainly crying out, he fell to raling and wringing his master, upbraiding him that he was not a true Philosopher […].
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.31:
- (obsolete) To a great degree; very much. [15th-19th c.]
- Chiefly; for the most part. [from 17th c.]
- 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 12, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
- She had Lord James' collar in one big fist and she pounded the table with the other and talked a blue streak. Nobody could make out plain what she said, for she was mainly jabbering Swede lingo, but there was English enough, of a kind, to give us some idee.
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Translations
chiefly; for the most part
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