Dictionary

knee-jerkishly en · ADV

Etymology

From knee-jerkish + -ly.

Meanings

1. (informal) In a knee-jerkish manner.
   • What I am looking for in these pages is a way to express what I believe the NAIL legacy looks like from the vantage point of the new generation of critically minded international law scholars—half junior academics, half graduate students, most lawyers by training, some with little background in practice or activism, typically multilingual, practically atheist, socially liberal, knee-jerkishly ironic[…] 2012, Akbar Rasulov, “New Approaches to International Law: Images of a Geneaology”, in José María Beneyto, David Kennedy, editors, New Approaches to International Law: The European and the American Experiences, Springer, →ISBN, page 156:
   • Measurement specialists have been touting the importance of validity and reliability for so many years that most educators, when asked about how to judge a test's quality, will almost knee-jerkishly respond that validity and reliability are at the top of the test-evaluation list. 2000, W. James Popham, Modern Educational Measurement: Practical Guidelines for Educational Leaders, Allyn and Bacon, →ISBN, page 66:
   • Spotting these new meanings takes a more sophisticated approach to language, and one that is more sensitized to shades of definition instead of just knee-jerkishly categorizing a new meaning as "wrong." 2006, Erin McKean, editor, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 264:

Forms