adv. [f. prec. + -LY2.]
1. With a stare or open-eyed fixed gaze.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Errailler les yeux,… to open ones eyes wide, staringly.
1598. Florio, Rabbuffare,… to looke staringlie as a mad man.
1602. Manningham, Diary (Camden), 53. That long swaggerer … staringly demaunding what he ment … said the gent., ‘I tooke you for a May pole.’
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 545. Like as when we would open the eye more staringly the muscles of the forehead doe much helpe vs.
1821. Observer, 5 March, 4/5. ‘A Lion disturbed at his Repast,’ by a Serpent voluminous and vast, who has erected his head staringly full in the face of the regal quadruped.
1883. J. T. Trowbridge, in Harper’s Mag., Oct. 808/2.
| There the old shaggy, cane-thatched town, | |
| And, habited still sparingly, | |
| The natives, who came straggling down, | |
| And heard my questions staringly. |
† 2. Wildly, frantically. Obs.
1667. H. More, Div. Dial., III. xvii. (1713), 218. So staringly mad that the eye of Reason seems to have quite started out of their head.
1670. Eachard, Cont. Clergy, 43. Not by talking staringly, and casting a mist before the peoples eyes.
3. In a manner that ‘stares one in the face’; glaringly.
1817–8. Cobbett, Resid. U.S., 316. There is in this statement something … so ridiculously and staringly untrue, that [etc.].
1824. Blackw. Mag., XVI. 293. The veil is now … staringly, and strikingly transparent.
1833. W. Cobbett, Eng. Gram., xviii. 105. These are staringly absurd.
1879. Stevenson, Lay Morals (1911), 7. The universe … is plain, patent and staringly comprehensible.
