Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a wry, distorted, or awkward manner.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a wry manner.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in a wry manner

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From wry +‎ -ly.

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Examples

  • According to Albert Camus it is "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked a clear question" - which may explain why we usually use the term wryly, or sarcastically these days.

    Evening Standard - Home Richard Godwin 2012

  • Like his father and several other ancestors, Churchill wrestled with bouts of depression, which he referred to wryly as "the black dog."

    Book World: 'Mr. Chartwell' reviewed by Ron Charles 2011

  • Like his father and several other ancestors, Churchill wrestled with bouts of depression, which he referred to wryly as "the black dog."

    Book World: 'Mr. Chartwell' reviewed by Ron Charles 2011

  • Although a formal bid never materialized, some investors may recall wryly that Sir Philip was mooting an offer of

    HSBC Has Gone on the Civets Trail 2010

  • Here's our favorite, and we use that word wryly: In 2008, the average price for one square foot of space in a top-notch Class A Manhattan office building was a bubblicious

    Home | The New York Observer 2009

  • "I would flirt with him," she recalls wryly, her come-hither eyes and heart-shaped lips still echoing the days when she was decreed "Rock's Venus" by Rolling Stone.

    Vox Verax 2008

  • "I would flirt with him," she recalls wryly, her come-hither eyes and heart-shaped lips still echoing the days when she was decreed Rock's Venus by Rolling Stone.

    Taipei Times 2008

  • There's much to admire here: the sheer energy of the rhetoric of enumeration; the way the entirely man-made landscape alongside becomes the objective correlative for the consumer culture which has spawned it; the accumulating rhythmic patterns shaking out a kind of wryly humorous verbal jazz—I especially like the last sentence for that.

    The Lay of the Land Bruce Schauble 2006

  • There's much to admire here: the sheer energy of the rhetoric of enumeration; the way the entirely man-made landscape alongside becomes the objective correlative for the consumer culture which has spawned it; the accumulating rhythmic patterns shaking out a kind of wryly humorous verbal jazz—I especially like the last sentence for that.

    Archive 2006-12-01 Bruce Schauble 2006

  • As Ahlstrom wryly observed, these civic embodiments of religious sentiment were not forced upon an unresponsive people by a few pious political leaders.

    American Grace Robert D. Putnam 2010

Comments

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  • "He glanced down at me from the corner of his eye, smiling wryly."- Stephanie Meyer, Twilight, pg.103

    November 29, 2010