1. In the condition of a beggar, indigent; befitting a beggar, mean, poverty-stricken.
1545. Joye, Exp. Dan. vii. (R.). Poore beggerly fryers.
1596. Shaks., Tam. Shr., IV. i. 140. The rest were ragged, old, and beggerly.
1704. Pope, Lett. (1736), V. 2. No beggar is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author is so beggarly but he can keep a critic.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 330. As children multiplied … the household … became more and more beggarly.
2. fig. Intellectually poor, destitute of meaning or intrinsic value.
1526. Tindale, Gal. iv. 9. Weake and bedgarly [1611 beggerly] cerimones.
a. 1674. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., III. xv. 491. Weak and beggarly Arguments.
1883. Edin. Daily Rep., 6 June, 2/7. That most crude and beggarly conception of reform.
3. Displaying the spirit of a beggar; mean, sordid.
1577. Northbrooke, Dicing (1843), 140. The beggerly and greedy desire.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia, III. 319. Thou art the beggerliest dastardly villain.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., II. v. 29. He renders me the beggerly thankes.
1640. Bp. Hall, Episc., II. xix. 197. A very poor and beggarly evasion.
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., viii. 170. Lapsing into a beggarly habit.
4. Comb., as beggarly looking.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, xxxi. A forked, uncased, bald-pated, beggarly-looking scare-crow.
