Meaning

In a cautious and delicate manner; (very) carefully or cautiously..

Definitions by Sense

1. In a cautious and delicate manner; (very) carefully or cautiously.
2. (obsolete) Chiefly of dancing or walking: done with small, dainty steps; daintily; also, with excessive delicacy; affectedly, mincingly.
3. Often of movements: very careful, cautious, or delicate.
4. (obsolete) Often of a person or the way they move: dainty, delicate; also, excessively delicate; affected, mincing.

Example Sentences

He placed the glass jar gingerly on the concrete step.

In an other corner, Mistris Minx, a marchants wife, that will eate no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twentie shillings a pound, that lookes as simperingly as if she were besmeard, and iets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the canaries, […]

[E]nter you the chambers peaceably, locke the dores gingerly, looke vpon your vviues wofully, but vpon the euill-doers, moſt vvickedly.

Prithee, gentle officer, / Handle me gingerly, or I fall to pieces, / Before I can plead mine.

[…] Sir W. Pen made a formal speech in answer to a question of the King's, whether the lying of the sunk ships in the river would spoil the river. But, Lord! how gingerly he answered it, and with a deal of do that he did not know whether it would be safe as to the enemy to have them taken up, but that doubtless it would be better for the river to have them taken up.

My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the paſſage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.

Then of a sudden the rope was still—the stone had caught at the very edge. Gingerly the ape-man clambered up the frail rope.

Purchasing a snowplow transforms Homer [Simpson] into a new man. Mr. Burns' laziest employee suddenly becomes an ambitious self-starter who buys ad time on local television at 3:17 A.M^([sic]) (prime viewing hours, Homer gingerly volunteers, for everyone from alcoholics to the unemployable to garden-variety angry loners) and makes a homemade commercial costarring his family.

Word Forms

• more gingerly
• most gingerly
• gingerlier
• gingerliest

Synonyms for gingerly

Related Words

When Should You Use Gingerly?

Use gingerly when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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