adv. [f. CARDINAL a. + -LY2.] Fundamentally, pre-eminently.
1866. P. G. Medd, in Ch. & World, 348. That cardinally important subject.
1874. Morley, Compromise (1886), 36. Our own [age] is characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct.
¶ Humorous perversion of carnally (cf. cardinal sins).
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., II. i. 81. My wife, who, if she had bin a woman Cardinally giuen, might haue bin accus’d in fornication.
