Contingently

adv. [f. CONTINGENT a. + -LY².] In a contingent manner.

  1.  As a possibility that may or may not befall.

c. 1430.  trans. T. à Kempis, 104. Besy careyng of þinges þat are contingently to come.

1608.  [S. Hieron], Defence, II. 210. To prove that the devil could not foretell things contingently to come.

1798.  Malthus, Popul. (1817), III. 138. The increase of vice which might contingently follow an attempt to inculcate the duty of moral restraint.

  2.  In certain contingencies or cases, under certain conditions.

1657.  Cokaine, Obstinate Lady, Poems (1669), 339. Fal. Dost thou not think … that man happy Who’s free from … bondage of a woman? Cle. My Lord, contingently.

1849.  Ruskin, Sev. Lamps, vii. § 8. 193. Feelings which it may be only contingently in our power to recover.

1885.  Act 48–49 Vict., c. 25 § 25. A liability contingently chargeable, though not actually charged, on the revenues of India.

  3.  Not of necessity, but as circumstances are.

1588.  Fraunce, Lawiers Log., I. x. 46 b. Necessarily in the first, contingently in the second.

1628.  T. Spencer, Logick, 157. Euery proposition doth signifie something to be, either necessarily, or contingently.

1869.  J. Martineau, Ess., II. 153. Its propositions are true, not contingently … but necessarily.

  † 4.  Not under predetermined necessity; with freedom of will or liberty of action. Obs.

1601.  Dent, Pathw. Heauen, 283. He sinned voluntarily and contingently.

1653.  T. Whitfield, Treat. Sinf. Men, ix. 39. He determines that some things shal come to passe necessarily, other things freely and contingently.

a. 1680.  J. Corbet, Free Actions, I. xi. (1683), 8. Who can say … that God cannot Foreknow what a Creature, acting freely and contingently, will do?

1754.  Edwards, Freed. Will, II. ii. (ed. 4), 57. Those things which have a prior ground and reason of their particular existence … do not happen contingently.

  5.  As it may happen, as chance will have it; accidentally.

1668.  Culpepper & Cole, Barthol. Anat., I. xxiii. 68. [These] happen by accident and contingently.

a. 1687.  Petty, Pol. Arith., ii. (1691), 36. Commodities … whose value depends upon the Fashion; or which are contingently scarce and plentiful.

1695.  Woodward, Nat. Hist. Earth, IV. (1702), 218. Out of even the highest mountains, and indeed all other parts of the Earth contingently and indifferently.

  6.  In dependence upon circumstances; dependently.

1655.  H. More, App. Antid. (1712), 193. But contingently and dependently of another.

1864.  Bowen, Logic, ii. 33. The operations of the Thinking Faculty are also contingently modified by the coexistence of other powers and affections of the mind.