sneeringly

English

Etymology

From sneering +‎ -ly.

Adverb

sneeringly (comparative more sneeringly, superlative most sneeringly)

  1. In a sneering manner.
    • 1857 May 7, “THE AMERICAN GUANO ISLANDS IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN.”, in The National Era, volume XI, number 540, Washington, D. C., page 74, column 7:
      On the 18th of January, 1856, Commodore Mervine sailed from San Francisco, by order of Mr. Secretary Dobbin, conveyed to him by Mr. G. W. Benson, agent of the American Guano Company, to take possession of Baker and Jarvis Islands, in the name of the United States. He was also to survey the islands, and bring home specimens of the guano. Commodore Mervine, believing this matter one of the first importance, instead of sending a sloop of war, went himself in the Independence, his own ship. His route ought to have been first to Jarvis Island; but he passed by that, and sailed directly to Baker’s Island. Having reached this island, he sailed around what he sneeringly calls “the El Dorado of mercantile and agricultural interests of our country.” “The delusion was transitory,” he writes the Secretary of the Navy, “for, on applying his eye to his telescope,” he made the most marvellous discovery of modern times, viz: that “the island was covered with birdlime in a state of decomposition.”
    • 1958, A.G. Yates, The Cold Dark Hours, Sydney: Horwitz, published 1963, page 57:
      "You know what sort of portrait we want?" "Captain of Industry?" Roger said sneeringly.
    • 1993, James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, page 10:
      The collapse in the legitimacy of what once was respectfully called middle-class morality but today is sneeringly referred to as "middle-class values"
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