Etymology From Old English wāclīċe (“weakly”), equivalent to weak + -ly (adjectival suffix); compare Old English wāclīċ (“weak; ignoble; mean”), and Old Norse veikligr (“weakly; sick”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkaz (“weakly; weak”).
1
Frail, sickly or of a delicate constitution; weak.
I lay in weakly case and confined to my bed for four months before I was able to rise and health returned to me.1885, Sir Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 18:
I'd always been but weakly, / And my baby was just born; / A neighbour minded her by day, / I minded her till morn.1889, WB Yeats, The Ballad of Moll Magee:
1 more example
"Oh, a huge crab," Jacob murmured—and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom.1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob's Room:
Etymology From Middle English weykly, equivalent to weak + -ly (adverbial suffix). Compare Old High German weihlīcho (“weakly”), Middle English wocliche, wokli, wacliche (both from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkō).
1
With little strength or force.
The basitemporal platform is flat in posterior view because the mamillar tuberosities are very weakly developed.2002, T. H. Worthy, The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric Life of New Zealand, page 128: