gingerly

The second element is -ly; the first element may be Anglo-Norman gençur or Old French gençor, gensor, comparative forms (also attested as positives) of gent (“beautiful, noble, pleasant, courteous”). The Oxford English Dictionary notes, however, that there is a gap of a few centuries between the last appearance of gençor, etc., and the first appearance of gingerly.^[1]

The adjective is derived from the adverb, possibly because -ly is also a suffix forming adjectives.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdʒɪn(d)ʒəli/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɪnd͡ʒɚli/
• Hyphenation: gin‧ger‧ly

gingerly (comparative more gingerly, superlative most gingerly)

1. In a cautious and delicate manner; (very) carefully or cautiously.

   Synonyms: (chiefly Britain, regional, Canada, US) ginger, tentatively, warily

   He placed the glass jar gingerly on the concrete step.

   • 1592, Thomas Nash[e], Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Deuill. […]‎^[1], London: […] [John Charlewood for] Richard Ihones, […], →OCLC:

     In an other corner, Mistris Minx, a marchants wife, that will eate no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twentie shillings a pound, that lookes as simperingly as if she were besmeard, and iets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the canaries, […]

   • 1604 (first performance), Tho[mas] Dekker, Iohn Webster [i.e., John Webster], West-ward Hoe. […], London: […] [William Jaggard], and to be sold by Iohn Hodgets […], published 1607, →OCLC, Act V:

     [E]nter you the chambers peaceably, locke the dores gingerly, looke vpon your vviues wofully, but vpon the euill-doers, moſt vvickedly.

   • 1624 November 3 (first performance), Philip Massinger, “The Parliament of Love”, in W[illiam] Gifford, editor, The Plays of Philip Massinger, […], volume II, London: […] G[eorge] and W[illiam] Nicol; […] by W[illiam] Bulmer and Co. […], published 1805, →OCLC, Act V, scene i, page 307:

     Prithee, gentle officer, / Handle me gingerly, or I fall to pieces, / Before I can plead mine.

   • 1667 July 13 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “July 3rd, 1667”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume VII, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1896, →OCLC, page 5:

     […] Sir W. Pen made a formal speech in answer to a question of the King's, whether the lying of the sunk ships in the river would spoil the river. But, Lord! how gingerly he answered it, and with a deal of do that he did not know whether it would be safe as to the enemy to have them taken up, but that doubtless it would be better for the river to have them taken up.

   • 1762, [Laurence Sterne], chapter V, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume V, London: […] T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, […], →OCLC, page 37:

     My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the paſſage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.

   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 208:

     Then of a sudden the rope was still—the stone had caught at the very edge. Gingerly the ape-man clambered up the frail rope.

   • 2012 June 3, Nathan Rabin, “The Simpsons (Classic): ‘Mr. Plow’”, in The A.V. Club‎^[2], archived from the original on 27 October 2020:

     Purchasing a snowplow transforms Homer [Simpson] into a new man. Mr. Burns' laziest employee suddenly becomes an ambitious self-starter who buys ad time on local television at 3:17 A.M^[sic] (prime viewing hours, Homer gingerly volunteers, for everyone from alcoholics to the unemployable to garden-variety angry loners) and makes a homemade commercial costarring his family.

   • 2014 January 20, Michael Daly, “The Black and White Men who Saved Martin Luther King’s Life”, in The Daily Beast‎^[3], published 14 April 2017 (update), archived from the original on 18 January 2021:

     [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] was later said to have been within a sneeze or a jolt of extinction. Were it not for the pair of cops who gingerly carried him from Blumstein’s department store and the pair of surgeons who performed lifesaving surgery at Harlem Hospital there would have been no "I Have a Dream" speech and likely no national holiday honoring him.

   • 2021, Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation‎^[4], Random House, →ISBN:

     When we got there and went to our room he undressed and shut off the light as I was still doing so, and I got into bed gingerly, facing his turned back, and reached out to touch him.

2. (obsolete) Chiefly of dancing or walking: done with small, dainty steps; daintily; also, with excessive delicacy; affectedly, mincingly.
   • 1604 (first performance), Tho[mas] Dekker, Iohn Webster [i.e., John Webster], West-ward Hoe. […], London: […] [William Jaggard], and to be sold by Iohn Hodgets […], published 1607, →OCLC, Act II:

     Oh! ſhe lookes ſo ſugredly, ſo ſimpringly, ſo gingerly, ſo amarouſly, ſo amiably. […] [She] is ſuch an intycing ſhee-vvitch, carrying the charmes of your Ievvels about her. Oh!

• ginger (adjective, adverb, and verb)

• gingerish
• gingerness

gingerly (comparative more gingerly or (rare) gingerlier, superlative most gingerly or (rare) gingerliest)

1. Often of movements: very careful, cautious, or delicate.

   Synonyms: (chiefly Britain, regional, Canada, US) ginger, gingerish, tentative, wary

   • 1857 November 30, “The Atlantic Monthly”, in Wisconsin Daily State Journal, volume VI, number 366, Madison, Wis., →OCLC, page [2], column 3:

     We can honestly commend the Atlantic Monthly as the most able and spirited of American periodicals, at the present time, and we like it, moreover, because it dares have opinions and to express them in unmistakable terms, on subjects which when referred to at all, by most of the current magazines, are mentioned in the gingerliest namby-pamby style of common place neutrality.

   • 1867, R[ebecca] H[arding] Davis, “The Valley of the Shadow”, in Waiting for the Verdict, New York, N.Y.: Sheldon & Company, published 1868, →OCLC, page 174:

     But, ther's somethin' in the very look and voice of Jeems Strebling, even in his gingerly walk, that riles all the black drop in me.

   • 1886 May, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXII, in The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, page 301:

     [P]enetrating cautiously into dark cellars, sallying with gingerly tread to the garden, now leaf-strewn by the autumn winds, […]

   • 1909 October 18, “Querying ‘Worse’”, in The Times-Dispatch, number 18,047, Richmond, Va., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 2:

     During the extra session there were few crimes in the decalogue of which we were not accused, and all because of our old-fashioned tariff views and our quaint, blunt way of expressing them. While this treatment had its toughening effects, none the less did the Landmark’s icy rebuke mortify and silence us. We return to the painful subject in the gingerliest way imaginable, our mood far from affirmative, but interrogatory from first to last.

   • 1961 March, Trains Illustrated, London: Ian Allan Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, image caption, page 185:

     The down "Atlantic Coast Express", headed by Pacific No. 35020 Bibby Line, passes the scene of operations at a gingerly 10 m.p.h.

   • 2012, David [Alan] Mack, chapter 28, in Persistence of Memory (Star Trek: The Next Generation; Cold Equations; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, →ISBN, part 3 (Elegy):

     Several gingerly taps on her console fired clusters of modified probes into the maelstrom of the gas giant’s atmosphere.

2. (obsolete) Often of a person or the way they move: dainty, delicate; also, excessively delicate; affected, mincing.
   • 1573 September, Gabriel Harvey, “The Schollars Loove, or Reconcilement of Contraryes”, in Edward John Long Scott, editor, Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D. 1573–1580. […] ([Camden Society Publications] New Series; XXXIII), Westminster: […] [F]or the Camden Society […] by Nichols and Sons, […], →OCLC, page 115:

     All y^e rest of my trimmest, tricksiest, gingerliest ioyes, / But very tædious and most odious toyes?

• gingerliness

• niggerly