Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In an apocryphal manner; uncertainly; equivocally; doubtfully.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb In an apocryphal manner; mythically; not indisputably.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In an apocryphal manner.
  • adverb Regarding apocryphas.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

apocryphal +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • The ongoing stories offer an “illusion of change,” a phrase apocryphally attributed to Stan Lee.

    Archive 2009-08-01 2009

  • The ongoing stories offer an “illusion of change,” a phrase apocryphally attributed to Stan Lee.

    Nightwing’s Great Leap 2009

  • In the Piazza, called apocryphally after Julius Cæsar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a good carriage and two indefatigable horses.

    Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III John Addington Symonds 1866

  • In the Piazza, called apocryphally after Julius Cæsar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a good carriage and two indefatigable horses.

    Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series John Addington Symonds 1866

  • In the Piazza, called apocryphally after Julius Cæsar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a good carriage and two indefatigable horses.

    New Italian sketches John Addington Symonds 1866

  • As in your guests' bladders, after the halftime rush to the toilet apocryphally known as the "Super Bowl flush" causes your home's plumbing system to fail.

    The top 5 Super Bowl party fouls 2011

  • In this context, it might be worth remembering something apocryphally attributed to Goethe, who was smart.

    There's Smart and There's Wise, Humble and Effective 2011

  • And a horrific voyage it was, beset by starvation and near-constant battles with the native peoples— including most famously and apocryphally a ferocious race of female fighters known as Amazons, after the warrior women of Greek mythology.

    Escaping The Rainforest Gerard Helferich 2011

  • Ad man turned novelist F Scott Fitzgerald declaimed advertising as having contributed "exactly minus zero" to human endeavour around the same time Ernest Hemingway is supposed, perhaps apocryphally, to have penned a six-word short story in the form of a small ad: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

    For sale: the ashtray that inspired William Gibson Alex Rayner 2010

  • If so, it will bear out the saying (attributed perhaps apocryphally to Chesterton) that when people stop believing in God they believe not in nothing but in anything.

    Giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Tony Blair said: “I... 2010

Comments

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  • Dorothy Parker dispensed caustic humor in prose and verse as well as over drinks. Her observations and remarks were very much of their time, but they still induce winces in an era when cutting snark has become practically de rigueur. Over the years many couplets and witticisms have been attributed to Parker, some apocryphally."

    August 22, 2016