Adjective: headly
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more headly |
| Superlative | most headly |
Sample Sentences
-
O'er blows the filthy and contagious clouds / Of headly murther, spoil, and villainy. [1623, Shakespeare, King Henry V.:]
Adjectives inflected like headly
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English hedly, havedlich, from Old English hēafodlīċ (“at the top, principal, capital, deadly”), equivalent to head + -ly. Cognate with West Frisian haadlik, Dutch hoofdelijk, Middle Low German hö̂vetlī̂k, Middle High German houbetlich (archaic German hauptlich). Piecewise doublet of chefly and chiefly. See: Dutch Adjectives '
hoofdelijk'.