Trenchantly

adv. [f. prec. + -LY².] In a trenchant manner; ‘cuttingly,’ incisively; sharply and effectively; definitely; so as to go to the root of a matter.

a. 1325.  MS. Rawl. B. 520. lf. 61 b. Him bi-houez to seggen trenchauntliche þat he is bastard.

1832.  Times, 13 Nov., 3/3. When the knife is almost at her [church of England’s] throat … stupidly bullying her antagonists to do their work trenchantly from ear to ear.

1860.  R. B. Brough, Marston Lynch, xiii. 116. He is trenchantly severe on better painters than himself.

1873.  Hamerton, Intell. Life, VII. iii. (1875), 241. The educations of the two sexes were so trenchantly separated that neither had access to the knowledge of the other.

1877.  Le Conte, Elem. Geol., iii. (1879), 161. Groups of species confined within certain areas differing from other groups, sometimes overlapping them, sometimes trenchantly separated.

1896.  W. C. Sidgwick, in Times, 11 Dec., 10/6. I hope the ‘roughness of my methods’ only means that I dealt trenchantly with his theories.

  So Trenchantness, the quality of being trenchant.

1842.  Manchester Times, 26 Nov., 4/3. Certainly it [William Hone’s conversation] was, for fulness, and variety, and trenchantness, peculiarly fascinating.

1892.  Temple Bar Mag., Oct., 289. She … says so, with a trenchantness which brings up a little cloud of disappointed surprise.