faintly

From Middle English feintli, feintliche, equivalent to faint +‎ -ly.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfeɪntli/

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faintly (comparative faintlier, superlative faintliest)

1. In a faint manner; very quietly or lightly.
   • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     Faintlier, faintlier came the footfalls to his ear, until of all the faint sounds that came, by the abandoned air, to his ear, not one was a footfall, as far as he could judge.

• antifly