Dictionary

dovely en · ADJ

Etymology

From Middle English douvely, equivalent to dove + -ly.

Meanings

1. (rare) Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a dove; dovelike.
   • Furthermore, Byron's dove is not nearly so naïve as Coleridge's dovely Christabel, and the reader gets the sense that this carefully invested holy dove might just transcend the ordinary expectations of the human—[…] 2016, Chase Pielak, Memorializing Animals during the Romantic Period, page 118:
   • Cold, tired, hungry, one half that dovely pair strode sternly up St. Helier's slope, the other half feebly wabbled behind. 1897, Margaret Barker Upham Wright, Hired Furnished:
   • […] while there up above lay the dead doves, who, before they died, decorously spread out their wings like fans and tucked up their tiny heads, just as Lady Death, the dovely reaper has contrived it ... O Colomba, Colomba, my little dove […] 1998, Bohumil Hrabal, Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka, page 26:
   • I shall color the feathers of your dovely wings with rainbows which emanate from the blazing suns of my fiery eyes. 2000, Michael Sunstar, Underground Rave Dance, page 472:
   • She looks like the bright smiling image of Grace. Her eyes are so dovely, Loving, and lovely, […] 1853, Edward Hind, Poems, page 28:
   • Here grows a rare thing — the sword-leaf White Helleborine; and the 'Bee' and 'Fly' orchises in their season, and the commoner Columbine, each of whose pendent blossoms resembles five culvers clinging round the rim of a nest: doves varying in hue from the 'blue rock' to the milk-white pouter — there is something peculiarly archaic in the sculpturing of the lineaments of this dovely plant. 1904, Edmund Bogg, Lower Wharfeland:

Forms