gaily

From gay +‎ -ly.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡeɪli/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -eɪli
• Hyphenation: gai‧ly

gaily (comparative more gaily, superlative most gaily)

1. (dated) Merrily.
2. (dated) Showily.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.

• Gaily is not attested in reference to the "homosexual man" definition of the word's adjective form, gay, for which gayly is a rare but attested usage. Despite this, the adverb gaily has largely fallen out of use due to this semantic shift of the adjective gay.