Thinly

adv. [f. THIN a. + -LY².] In a thin manner.

  1.  With little thickness or depth; with thin clothing. Also fig.

13[?].  K. Alis., 5906 (Bodl. MS.). Thynnelich hy beþ y-hatered.

1746.  Francis, trans. Hor., Sat., II. vi. 94. This Morning Air is very bad For them, who go but thinly clad.

1770.  Phil. Trans., LXI. 334. I covered the bottom with it thinly.

1855.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xxi. IV. 570. The scheme of assassination, thus thinly veiled, was communicated to James.

1859.  Gullick & Timbs, Paint., 229. Pictures in oil … may, of course, be thinly painted throughout.

  b.  fig. Poorly, meagerly. ? Obs. rare.

1537.  Cromwell, in Merriman, Life & Lett. (1902), II. 75. Your neighbours, without whom … all the rest of you would live full thynnely.

  2.  With large intervals of space or time; sparsely; not closely or thickly.

c. 1545.  in Dugdale, Monast. (1821), III. 283. v. acrez di. thinly growyne with olde bechez and some oke.

1667–8.  Sir T. Browne, Brampton Urns, Wks. 1835, III. 500. Great ones were but thinly found.

a. 1727.  Newton, Chronol. Amended, i. (1728), 178. He found that country … peopled but thinly.

1827.  Hone, Every-day Bk., II. 106. The market was … thinly attended.

  3.  In combination with pa. pples. or adjs. used attributively; now usually hyphened.

1757.  Dyer, Fleece, I. Wks. (1761), 60. The thinly-scatter’d meal.

1797.  Godwin, Enquirer, II. xii. 454. Ten thinly printed pages.

1862.  Ansted, Channel Isl., I. ii. (ed. 2), 26. Thinly-bedded grey rocks.

1890.  ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer (1891), 70. An open, thinly-timbered, well-grassed country.

1902.  Daily Chron., 25 Jan., 3/2. He makes thinly-veiled love to the young lady.