Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • By stealing; slyly; secretly.

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

  • adverb By stealing, or as by stealing, furtively, or by an invisible motion.

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

  • adverb By stealing; furtively or with invisible motion.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

stealing +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • Mike McGowan and Michele Ragusa wrap their operetta-quality voices around "So in Love" and "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" to luscious effect, while William Ryall and Gordon Joseph Weiss are scene-stealingly good as the stage-struck gangsters who tap-dance their way through "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."

    Recipe for a Hit: Just Add Waters 2008

  • Ditching the Bruce character entirely, this "Almighty" focuses on Steve Carell's scene-stealingly tongue-tied newsman Evan Baxter endowed with the Lord's powers, Bruce had memorably made Evan trip over his words on-air.

    YesButNoButYes: Just Say Noah 2007

  • Worried, Gates offered two inconsistent defenses of himself: the letter was a forgery, and the offending phrase must have been “stealingly copied” by Hamilton when he was on his mission to Albany.8 Washington then told Gates the truth: that his own aide Wilkinson had blurted the words out in a tavern to another officer, who had passed it along to the commander-in-chief.

    Alexander Hamilton, American Richard Brookhiser 1999

  • Worried, Gates offered two inconsistent defenses of himself: the letter was a forgery, and the offending phrase must have been “stealingly copied” by Hamilton when he was on his mission to Albany.8 Washington then told Gates the truth: that his own aide Wilkinson had blurted the words out in a tavern to another officer, who had passed it along to the commander-in-chief.

    Alexander Hamilton, American Richard Brookhiser 1999

  • Those letters have been stealingly copied, but which of them, when and by whom, is to me as yet an unfathomable secret.

    Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997

  • Those letters have been stealingly copied, but which of them, when and by whom, is to me as yet an unfathomable secret.

    Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997

  • If a leaf of the paper, which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, made but one faintest rustle, how did that _reveille_ boom in echoes through the vacant and haunted chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and there was a cough in my throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost blood.

    The Purple Cloud 1906

  • Those letters have been stealingly copied; but, which of them, when, or by whom, is to me, as yet, an unfathomable secret.

    The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States John Marshall 1795

  • "W. is the sort of movie we can't help but evaluate in part by comparing its actors to the public figures they impersonate and trying to determine whether the performances transcend impersonation," notes Thandie Newton, in a creaky, sketch-comedy-grade caricature of Jeffrey Wright, so scene-stealingly good as a deeply concerned

    GreenCine Daily 2009

  • "W. is the sort of movie we can't help but evaluate in part by comparing its actors to the public figures they impersonate and trying to determine whether the performances transcend impersonation," notes Thandie Newton, in a creaky, sketch-comedy-grade caricature of Jeffrey Wright, so scene-stealingly good as a deeply concerned

    GreenCine Daily 2009

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