Eternally

adv. [f. as prec. + -LY².] In an eternal manner.

  1.  Chiefly with reference to God: ‘From everlasting and to everlasting.’

c. 1385.  Chaucer, L. G. W., 2226, Philomene. Thow … that hast wrought This fayre world, & bar it In thyn thought Eternaly [v.r. eternally] er thow thyn werk beganne.

1594.  Hooker, Eccl. Pol., I. xvi. The lawe which God with himselfe hath eternally set downe.

1677.  Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., I. iii. 86. If it were eternally altered, or eternally corrupted, then it was eternally, and eternally was not; it was eternally without alteration, and eternally altered.

1839.  Bailey, Festus (1852), 344. What comes before and after the great world … God alone knows eternally.

  2.  Without end; for ever; throughout eternity.

c. 1391.  Chaucer, Scogan, 2. To-brokene ben þe statutis in heuene Þat creat were eternally [v.r. eternaly] to dure.

c. 1430.  Syr Gener. (Roxb.), ad fin. To heven blis forto wende Eternallie there to be.

1549.  Bk. Com. Prayer, Burial of Dead. Whosoeuer liueth, and beleueth in hym, shal not dye eternallye.

1595.  W. C[larke], in Shaks. C. Praise, 15. Bartasse, eternally praise-worthie for his weeks worke.

1654.  Earl Orrery, Parthenissa (1676), 575. Then the survivor fetching two or three groans over his dead enemy, fell down eternally by his side.

1746–7.  Hervey, Medit. (1818), 76. Would they not bless the grave … and wish to lie eternally hid in its deepest gloom?

  b.  hyperbolically.

1664.  Sir C. Lyttelton, in Hatton Corr. (1878), 43. Y^rs, eturnally.

  3.  With perpetual recurrence; continually, constantly, incessantly.

1670.  Cotton, Espernon, Pref. The Duke himself being so eternally upon the Scene of Action, that we shall seldom find him retir’d.

1712.  Arbuthnot, John Bull (1755), 31. The other was eternally drunk.

1793.  Smeaton, Edystone L., § 246. I found it eternally rung in my ears from all quarters.

1884.  F. M. Crawford, Rom. Singer, I. 14. Nor is he eternally pulling a pair of monstrous white cuffs over his hands.

  4.  Immutably, unalterably.

a. 1716.  South, 12 Serm. (1718), II. 321 (J.). That which is Morally Good, or Evil,… must be also Eternally, and Unchangeably, a Moral Good, or Evil.

1878.  J. P. Hopps, Princ. Relig., viii. 26. There is such a thing as the eternally right and the unchangeably good.