Dictionary

rockily en · ADV

Etymology

Etymology tree English rocky Middle English -ly English -ly English rockily From rocky + -ly.

Meanings

1. In an uneven way; in a rocking manner.
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20050217043222/http://www.talkcinema.com/reviews/cannes9907.html French actress Sophie Marceau entered rockily on heels
   • The hand-held camera rockily zooms in on one of the surgeons who is holding a circular surgical saw covered in dried blood. https://web.archive.org/web/20050205194927/http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread95347/pg1
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20060508091041/http://www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info/articles/earprob.htm We arrive there five minutes later and I sit up very rockily. I have to get off this boat, I am getting sick.
2. In a manner suggestive of a rock or rocks.
   • Ten minutes before serving whisk up the whites of eggs with a little sugar and pile rockily on top. 1956, “Apple a Day”, in The Times:
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20060212182830/http://etcweb1.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/goheen_robert.html Patient, always humane and trustworthy, he is personally humble at the very time that he is rockily steadfast (an unsympathetic witness might say stubborn), not because he fails to understand and respect the views of others but because he refuses to compromise his own enduring values.
   • Roads, railway, river, streams, a world in accurate and lively detail, with mountains sticking up abruptly and rockily, as the old painters painted it. 1924, Maurice Magnus, Memoirs of the Foreign Legion:
   • http://www.dartmouth.edu/~doc/mountainbiking/roundsmartsmountain/ After the trail reaches the height of land, it descends sometimes steeply and often rockily.
3. Unsteadily; inconsistently or resulting in volatility.
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20051221172204/http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/mccoy1.htm They would gain much in common only slowly, and I should add rockily, for the early stages of their acquaintance was based substantially on mutual self-interest.
   • Having murdered her lecherous grandfather as he attempts an anal assault, Ludmila finds herself catapulted into a rockily conceived exercise in damage-control 2006 February 24, Liz Jensen, “Ludmila's Broken English, by D B C Pierre”, in The Independent:
   • At 13 Drew was using cocaine, and by the time she was 16 the rockily-rehabbed actress was co-authoring an autobiography about it all. https://web.archive.org/web/20060523201359/http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/starstruck/feature/?sernum=34
4. In a manner suggestive of rock music.
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20060429210002/http://www.atticlights.co.uk/about.html Top of the three here is “Ton Of Love”, a back beaten Tom Petty-ish album tracker with Beach Boy backing vox, slick and, get this, rockily abrasive.
   • https://web.archive.org/web/20060504130636/http://www.albemarle-london.com/notredame.html The music of Richard Cocciante, the book and lyrics of Luc Plamondon, with the lyrics translated by Will Jennings, are consistently and rockily entertaining

Forms