English

Adverb

atrabiliously ‎(comparative more atrabiliously, superlative most atrabiliously)

1. In an atrabilious (melancholy or ill-natured) manner; grumpily, irritably, morosely.
   • 1831 September, "S.", “Where is the Mob?”, in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume XXXII, number CXXIX, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington-Street, OCLC 7234323, page 233:

     Come, then, thou man of nice discernment and of most fastidious taste, and let us see what it is thou hatest; – where, and what is that mob which moveth thee so atrabiliously? All below a certain class may be regarded as the mob.

   • 1854, Heberden Milford, A Physician's Tale. [...] In Three Volumes, volume III, London: Hurst and Blackett, publishers, successors to Henry Colburn, 13, Great Marlborough Street, OCLC 557417121, page 237:

     I atrabiliously drew on my trousers, and grumbled furiously at the stupidity of my Highland valet.

   • 1899, Voltaire; W[illiam] H[enry] Ireland, Catherine Maria Dawson Bury, Lady Charleville, Ernest Dowson, transls., La Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans: An Heroic-comical Poem in Twenty-one Cantos by Arouret de Voltaire: A New and Complete Translation into English Verse, Revised, Corrected, and Augmented from the Earlier English Translation of W. H. Ireland, and the One Attributed to Lady Charleville, with the Variants, now for the First Time Translated by Ernest Dowson, London: Printed for the Lutetian Society, OCLC 45003533, page 95:

     With both his eyes in his two hands' default, / At brother Luther he made fierce assault; / Then atrabiliously his gaze he turned, / Upon a Roman pontiff he discerned.

   • 1968, Hal Porter, The Actors, an Image of the New Japan, [Sydney]: Angus & Robertson, ISBN 978-0-207-95014-8, page 12:

     Nothing at all is recallable of the journey into Tokyo, and to the Tokyo Hilton Hotel – no sounds feudally romantic (the noodle-seller's flute, for example, which tootles atrabiliously in every book about Japan), no exotic sights or odours, no flashes of insight, no pricking of the thumbs.

   • 1986, Donald Akenson, The Orangeman: The Life & Ties of Ogle Gowan, Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, ISBN 978-0-88862-963-0, page 227:

     Buchanan was about to reply atrabiliously that he was not a wayside pox-doctor for every rake who passed along the King's Highway, but, remembering that in part he owed the establishment of his practice in Brockville to Gowan, he held his tongue.

Quotations

For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:atrabiliously.

Related terms

• atrabiliary
• atrabilious
• atrabiliousness