Dictionary

illimitably en · ADV

Etymology

From illimitable + -ly.

Meanings

1. In an illimitable manner.
   • We are glad to perceive that premature efforts are not made to accomplish what cannot be done well for, though the art is illimitably long, yet a slow progress is the most sure, and will ultimately be found the most rapid. The taste of the public, too, cannot be forced; but must be carried gradually and easily along to the highest branches of the art, or it will fall back again to the rude and unformed state from which it is just emerging. 1836, Making of America Project, The North American Review, Volume 43, Charles Bowen, page 53:
   • Over all these ascends, at the distance of twenty five miles, the round summit of Agamenticus. North-eastward, the Isles of Shoals appear, at the distance of eight leagues, like a cloud in the horizon. Eastward, the ocean spreads illimitably. 1823, Timothy Dwight, Travels in New-England and New York, William Baynes and Son, and Ogle, Duncan & Company; Edinburgh: H.S. Baynes and Company, page 402:
   • The wind had scattered every cloud, and still howled through the clear gray morning sky, the sea was in violent commotion, and huge surges broke heavily and rapidly on the beach. The tide was flowing fast, and the bed of the river, we had crossed so safely the night before, was covered by the waves; in a little time the ford would be impassable, and this was another reason to hasten the arrival of the horses. To the east each crag and precipice, each vast mountain top, showed in dark relief against the golden eastern sky; seaward the horizon was misty from the gale, and the ocean stretched out illimitably; curlews and gulls screamed as they skimmed the crested waves, and breaker after breaker dashed furiously at my feet. 1837, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Falkner: A Novel, Saunders and Otley, page 273:

Forms