bodily

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Feb 22 01:34:32 UTC 2011


is in OED, but ...

I initially thought it to be somewhat different, but it seems to be just
an interdating--albeit different from all the other examples--of bodily
adv. 3.

> 3. transf. With the whole body or bulk, 'body and all'; all together,
> in one mass, as a whole.
> 1793    J. Smeaton Narr. Edystone Lighthouse (ed. 2) §322   The seas
> came in bodily over the Barbican wall.
> 1850    E. B. Browning Poems II. 4   As if that, over brake and lea,
> Bodily the wind did carry The great altar of St. Mary.
> 1877    A. B. Edwards Thousand Miles up Nile xviii. 520   A
> full-length portrait of Seti I., cut out bodily from the walls of his
> sepulchre.

Headline: For the Salem Gazette; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Salem Gazette; Date: 12-30-1834; Volume: XII; Issue: 104; Page:
[2]; Location: Salem, Massachusetts
> It would be an infinitely greater disaster, and it is impossible to
> say more, than the re-election of /Old Hickory/, or the election of
> Van Buren, or Amos Kendall, or /Dick/ Johnson, or the whole Kitchen
> Cabinet *bodily*.

Although the meaning "as a whole [body]" can be assigned to all four
examples--the three originals and the Salem one--only the Salem one
suggests that "bodily" means "collectively". Surely, this is not the
greatest possible interdating, as the original examples are fairly close
together, but, perhaps the variation in meaning and usage might allow
inclusion. Or, maybe, I'm just full of it.

     VS-)

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