[f. FONDLE v. + -ING2.] That fondles; caressing, endearing.
1676. Glanvill, Seasonable Refl., 207. What can the fondling flesh and the world do for thee?
c. 1704. Prior, Henry & Emma, 64.
| He call’d her oft, in sport, his Nut-brown Maid, | |
| The friends and tenants took the fondling word. |
1768. Goldsm., Good-n. Man, IV. i. I will discard the fondling hope from my bosom.
1798. Mad. D’Arblay, Lett., March. He now lifted up his head, and before I could answer, called out in a fondling manner, ‘Mamma, mamma!’
1821. Clare, The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems, II. 27. The Woodman. His chuff cheeks dimpling in a fondling smile.
1814. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. (1863), 211. Mossy (for by that fondling nursery name she best liked to be called) had never been married.
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, i. (1879), 13. Oh! that man!—how he bawled and contradicted, and laid down the law, and spoke to my mother in a fondling, patronizing way, which made me, I knew not why, boil over with jealousy and indignation.
Hence Fondlingly adv.
1835. New Monthly Mag., XLV. 80. We have seldom seen a group more beautifully, more strikingly pictorial, than that where, at the opening of the fourth scene, she clings fearingly and fondlingly to Lablache, who looked to the life, a gallant, not Roundhead, but Cavalier all of the olden time.
