carefully
advUK /ˈkɛːf(ə)li/ · US /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/
Etymology From Middle English carfulli, carefulliche, from Old English carfullīċe, ċearfullīċe (“carefully, diligently”), equivalent to careful + -ly.
1
Obsolete Sorrowfully.
- […] there was she faine / To call them all in order to her ayde, / And them conjure, upon eternall paine, / To counsell her, so carefully dismayd, / How she might heale her sonne […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
2
With care; attentively, circumspectly.
- As he was a politician, he discussed all subjects carefully, not offending anyone.
- He carefully studied the papers, while planning his next move.
2 more examples
- He carefully avoided the subject all evening.
- Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. ¶ There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0091:
3
Conscientiously, painstakingly, fastidiously, meticulously
- Derived terms
- tread carefully