Faintly

Definition: Faintly

Faintly

Adverb

1. To a faint degree or weakly perceived; "between him and the dim light a form was outlined faintly"; "stars shining faintly through the overcast"; "could hear his distant shouts only faintly"; "the rumors weren't even faintly true".

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "faintly" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1200. (references)

Smallness

Adverb: to a small extent, on a small scale; a little bit, a wee bit; slightly; Adjective: imperceptibly; miserably, wretchedly; insufficiently; imperfectly; faintly; passably, pretty well, well enough.

Crosswords: Faintly

Books

• Faintly Sounds the War-Cry: The Story of the Fight at Little Battle Butte (reference)

  (more book examples)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Portion of Siboney, Cuba, showing hill to right of beach. : The mining town of Firmeza is faintly seen, seven miles north in the mountains. Credit: National Library of Medicine.

View of the ship's stern, showing her twin outboard skegs, with five-bladed propellers at their after ends. Four-bladed inboard propellers are faintly visible, with the ship's twin rudders directly aft of them. Taken in drydock at the Newport News Ship Building and Drydock Company, Newport News, Virginia, 13 March 1942. Credit: NAVY.

Fires her forward 8"/55 guns at enemy gun positions at Hungnam, North Korea, on 26 July 1953, the day before the Korean armistice was signed. Three shells are faintly visible in the upper right. On 2159 hrs on 27 July 1953, a minute prior to the armistice taking effect, Saint Paul fired the last Navy bombardment round of the Korean War. Credit: NAVY.

Band concert under the battleship's after 16"/50 guns, while she was operating at sea with the Pacific Fleet, circa 1945. An aircraft carrier is faintly visible in the right distance. Sailor in right foreground has name J.C. Smith stencilled on his working jacket. Credit: NAVY.

At anchor prior to her World War I Navy service. One of nine 62'4" boats built by Herreshoff, of Bristol, Rhode Island, specifically for Naval service, and known initially as Herreshoff Hull 316, this craft was taken over by the Navy and placed in commission on 18 September 1917 as USS Kangaroo (SP-1284). She was transferred to the Treasury Department on 22 November 1919. This photograph, in which the name "Kangaroo" is faintly visible on the boat's pilothouse, was also used on the contemporary "SP" record cards of two sisters: Daiquiri (SP-1285) and War Bug (SP-1795). Credit: NAVY.

Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 28 February 1945. Her torpedo tubes are trained out on both sides of the ship. Note depth charge tracks on her stern, with her name faintly visible below them. Credit: NAVY.

In Tokyo Bay, Japan, after 1935. Behind her are the battleships Fuso and Haruna (most distant). Faintly visible in the right distance are two cruisers and an aircraft carrier. Credit: NAVY.

Photographed on 22 August 1960, off New London, Connecticut. A "GUPPY" type submarine is faintly visible in the distance, just beyond the forward tip of Scorpion's "sail". Credit: NAVY.

How did your husband find out? asked the head faintly. Credit: Library of Congress.

Ah, like a wood Anemone, thy face, thy curving throat shone faintly through the enfolding gloom that hung about me. Credit: Library of Congress.

Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

The clerk smiled faintly.

Mason gave him another grim look from a vast repertoire he had developed which ranged from very, very blackly grim indeed at the bottom of the scale, all the way up to tiredly resigned and only faintly grim, which he reserved for his children’s birthdays

He rapped faintly on the window

The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to spread abroad its widening tail

They obeyed impulses which registered only faintly in their thinking minds

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Beginning with "faintly": faintly-flamed, faintly-jewelled, faintly-patterned.

Albanian

turbull (indistinctly, vaguely), paksa (lightly, little, vaguely), lehtë (airily, easily, easy, facile, light, lightly, readily, slightly), dobët (flabbily, poorly, weakly). (various references)

Arabic 

‏على نحو ضعيف, ‏بصوت ضعيف. (various references)

Bulgarian 

слабо (flabbily, low, meanly, remotely, slightly, weakly), неясно (darkly, indefinitely, vaguely), едва-едва (just, precariously), едва (barely, but, fine, hardly, just, lightly, narrowly, scarce, scarcely), бледо. (various references)

Chinese 

微弱地 (Weakly). (various references)

Czech

slabì, nejasnì (hazily, obscurely). (various references)

Finnish

hämärästi (dimly, vaguely). (various references)

French

faiblement, timidement, d'une voix éteinte, d'un ton un peu éteint. (various references)

German

schwach (brittle, dim, dimly, docile, dull, faint, feckless, feeble, feebly, flimsily, flimsy, fragile, frail, impotent, infirm, infirmly, lame, languid, light, low, obscurely, poor, sinewed, slack, slender, slight, slightly, soft, thinly, uncertain, unsound, weak, weakly, wishy washy). (various references)

Greek 

αρκούντωσ (considerableably, fairly), δίκαια (deservedly, equitably, fairly, judicially). (various references)

Hungarian

halványan (palely, wanly). (various references)

Indonesian

dengan lemah (weakly). (various references)

Japanese Kanji 

ほら貝 (abstractedly, baby, being stupefied, blankly, by ones and twos, clip joint, conch, crunch, dazedly, dimly, doing nothing, doll, dreamily, drip drip, dry and crumbling, flushingly, gradually, hazily, here and there, idling away time, in flames, indistinctly, it's getting late, little by little, munch, one after another, pimples, rip-off, slang for cunt, slightly, splash, spots, subdued, to be moved to tears, to be touched by, to become blurred, to become dim, to become sentimental, to complain, to grumble, to rip someone off, trumpet shell, unfair overcharging, vaguely, we must be getting off, whispering, with a splash), 仄々と (dimly), 仄々 (dimly, heartwarming), 仄仄と (dimly), 仄仄 (dimly, heartwarming). (various references)

Japanese Katakana 

ぼうっと (abstractedly, being stupefied, blankly, dazedly, dimly, doing nothing, dreamily, flushingly, hazily, in flames, indistinctly, vaguely), ほのぼのと (dimly), ほのぼの (dimly, heartwarming), ほ�"のり (slightly). (various references)

Korean 

감도불량하게. (various references)

Manx

dy moal (beggarly, deliberately, poorly, slowly), dy faase, beggan beg (fleabite, little or nothing, very little), beggan (a few, little, partly, slightly, small piece, somewhat). (various references)

Pig Latin

aintlyfay.(various references)

Romanian

slab (adynamic, angular, bad, cold, cranky, crazy, dicky, dim, Dotty, dull, faint, feckless, feeble, feebly, female, flabby, flaccid, flat, fleshless, flimsy, footless, forceless, frail, gaunt, groggy, helpless, impotent, inner, jaded, jejune, languid, languishing, languorous, lax, lean, Lenten, light, loose, low, meager, meagre, mean, mild, milk and water, namby-pamby, nerveless, one horse, pale, peaked, penny-a-line, pimping, poor, poorly, powerless, quiet, remotely, rickety, scraggy, scrawny, shaky, sickly, silly, skinny, slack, slight, small, soft, sorry, spare, squeal, stringent, tender, thin, washy, weak, weakly), obosit (done, faint, tired, weak, wearily, weary), cu voce slabã, anemic (anaemic, debile, feeble, weak). (various references)

Russian 

слабо (flabbily, meanly, poorly, underact, wanly, weakly), бледно. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian

slabo (poorly), jedva (barely, hairbreadth, hardly, near, scarce, scarcely). (various references)

Spanish

débilmente (weakly). (various references)

Swedish

svagt (low, mildly, weakly), matt (depressed, dim, dull, dusty, faint, feeble, flat, frosted, jaded, lacklustre, languid, lustreless, mat, tame, weak, wishy washy), löst (lightly, loosely, solved). (various references)

Thai

อย่างแผ่วเบา. (various references)

Turkish

zayıf olarak. (various references)

Vietnamese 

yếu ớt (effeminate, impuissant, slack, soft, weakly, womanish), uể oải nhút nhát mờ nhạt, nhè nhẹ. (various references)

infirme. (various references)

Misspellings

"Faintly" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: daintly, fainly, faitly, feinty, fiatly, flauntly, Funtley, Pauntly. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

-1 letter: flinty, litany.

-2 letters: faint, fatly, final, fitly, flint, inlay, laity, linty, nifty.

-3 letters: alif, alit, anil, anti, ayin, fail, fain, fiat, fila, flan, flat, flay, flit, inly, lain, lati, lift, lint, liny, naif, nail, tail, tain, tali, tiny, tyin.

-4 letters: aft, ail, ain, ait, alt, ani, ant, any, fan, fat, fay, fil, fin, fit.

+1 letter: finality.

+2 letters: defiantly.

+3 letters: antifamily, flippantly, frontality, manifestly.

+4 letters: affectingly, factionally, falteringly, fanatically, fatiguingly, festinately, fictionally, filamentary, flauntingly, frantically, infantility, informality, interfamily, myofilament.

+5 letters: deflationary, effeminately, fictionality, flatteringly, fractionally, frangibility, frenetically, frictionally, functionally, gratifyingly, identifiably, ineffability, inflammatory, inflationary, interfaculty, myofilaments, pontifically, reflationary, satisfyingly, unfaithfully, unprofitably.