Dictionary

good-naturedly en · ADV

Etymology

Etymology tree English good-natured Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der. Proto-Germanic *līkąder. Proto-Germanic *-līkaz Proto-Germanic *-ê Proto-Germanic *-līkê Proto-West Germanic *-līkē Old English -līċe Middle English -ly English -ly English good-naturedly From good-natured + -ly.

Meanings

1. In a good-natured manner.
   • Later [Edwin] Meese, virtual seconds before he resigned, purported to take the whole T-shirt episode—you are not hallucinating—good-naturedly. “I take it as the joke I hope it was meant to be,” the then attorney general said. 1988 September, “Yikes! September! Anxiety season”, in E[dward] Graydon Carter, Kurt Andersen, editors, Spy […], New York, N.Y.: Spy Publishing Partners, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 11–12:
   • [H]ere the woman ſav’d me: I pretended a violent diſorder of my head, and a feveriſh heat, that indiſpos’d me too much to receive his embraces. He gave into this, and good-naturedly deſiſted. 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, pages 202–203:
   • Anstruther laughed good-naturedly. “[…] I shall take out half a dozen intelligent maistries from our Press and get them to give our villagers instruction when they begin work and when they are in the fields.” 1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 5, in Pulling the Strings:

Forms

Translations (3)

ru беззло́бно (in a good-natured manner) · cs dobrácky (in a good-natured manner) · pl dobrodusznie (in a good-natured manner)