deleriously = 'so as to impart delirium or ecstasy in the beholder or hearer; intoxicatingly; (hence, _broadly_) extravangantly; extraordinarily'

[Neal Whitman]

Typo for "deliciously"?

Neal

On Oct 27, 2010, at 1:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      deleriously = 'so as to impart delirium or ecstasy in the
>              beholder or hearer; intoxicatingly; (hence, _broadly_)
>              extravangantly; extraordinarily'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I assumed this was a 20th C. usage, but I was wrong - at least insofar as it
> relates to literal ecstasy or delirium. The 1851 may be considered
> ambiguous:
>
> [1851 Thomas DeQuincey  _Essays on the Poets_  (rpt. Boston: Ticknor &
> Fields, 1853) 286: The characters are all different, all marked, all in
> position; by which, never assuming fixed attitudes as to purpose and
> interest, the passions are deliriously complex, and the situations are of
> corresponding grandeur.]
>
> 1856 _Dwight's Journal of Music_ (Oct. 18) 21: [Y]et how deliriously
> beautiful, how soothing, or how exhilarating the harmony!
>
> 1884 _Punch_ 177 (Apr. 12): Beside him sat, or rather reclined in his arms,
> a deliriously beautiful girl.
>
> 1911 W. J. L. Hughes _The Hughes Family and Connections_ (Owensboro, Ky.:
> pvtly. ptd.) 163: Oh, how that carried my memory back to those glorious,
> deliriously beautiful days that I passed in that delightful region more than
> a half century ago. Calm, quiet, clear, tranquil, halcyon days were those.
>
> 1928 _The American Mercury_ XIV 17 [GB; not confirmed on paper]: [W]hat a
> deliriously marvelous feeling of superiority it gave her.
>
> 1949 Phyllis McGinley in _Harper's Magazine_   CXCIX 80 [GB; not confirmed
> on paper]: Few of us expect to be deliriously wealthy or world-famous or
> divorced.
>
> 1955 _Popular Science_ (June) 102: It's because the SAC's planes, B-47
> six-engine bombers, are almost deliriously complicated.
>
> 1989 Jim Conway _Friendship_ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Pyrenee Books) 48: The
> deliriously wonderful outcome was that I dated Janet several times.
>
> 2003 Thomas Cahill _Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea_ (N.Y.: Random House) 27: It
> is this formula that Homer intends to reveal to us [in the Iliad], a
> deliriously elaborate three-dimensional portrayal of human affairs.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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