Library / English Dictionary

GLADLY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (adverb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a willing manner

Example:

I would fain do it

Synonyms:

fain; gladly; lief

Classified under:

Adverbs

Pertainym:

glad (eagerly disposed to act or to be of service)

Credits

 Context examples: 

In truth, it had been so long since I had received sympathy that I was softened, and I became then, and gladly, her willing slave.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Yet what knight was there in that hall of St. Andrew's who would not have gladly laid down youth, beauty, and all that he possessed to win the fame of this man?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Any of the under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such was not the squire's pleasure, and the squire's pleasure was like law among them all.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I was weary of our little sitting-room and gladly acquiesced.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I would suppose him,—Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle, very, very fickle.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Our professors would gladly have stayed there all day, so entranced were they by this opportunity of studying the life of a prehistoric age.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Lord Byron's "dark blue seas" could not fail of being brought forward by their present view, and she gladly gave him all her attention as long as attention was possible.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day; and, continuing in his mirth, protested he would have gladly given a hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle’s bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages: and the comparison of Phaëton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the language of my heart, to give utterance to the burning ardour of my soul and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)