Dictionary

thoroughgoingly en · ADV

Etymology

From thoroughgoing + -ly.

Meanings

1. Fully; completely; thoroughly.
   • Ted Bundy wasn’t particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victim’s various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. 1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:
   • Step by step, as he fared forward, he collated, weighed, and measured, and registered thi results to which the best ascertained facts and straightforward logic necessitated him. He subverts, it must be granted, more than he establishes ; and yet, even where he is most thoroughgoingly destructive, he has, as a rule, something weighty to offer in suggestion, constructively. 1879, The Nation 1879-12-04: Volume 29, Issue 753, Nation Company L.P., page 390:
   • But especially it is the privilege of America to advance herself at one giant stride to the forefront of the world, not only in politics, but also in practical intelligence, by adopting consistently and thoroughgoingly that metric and numerical system which, once introduced, must surely and speedily subdue all others to itself. What other conceivable feat, either of peace or of war, could so glorify our intelligence and civilization as a people? 1891, Educational Review 1891-11: Volume 2, Society for the Advancement of Education, page 356:
   • The thoroughgoingly ironic environmentalist laughs at herself, not just at others. 2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 45:
   • Our feelings are not transferable. My world may have points of identity with other people's worlds. How thoroughgoingly we view matters in the same way is nevertheless very hard for us to tell. 1877, Ernest Carroll Moore, What is education?, page 171:

Forms