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INFINITELY
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I. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Continuing forever without end
Example:
there are infinitely many possibilities
Synonyms:
endlessly; infinitely
Classified under:
Antonym:
finitely (with a finite limit)
Pertainym:
infinite (having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Without bounds
Example:
he is infinitely wealthy
Synonyms:
boundlessly; immeasurably; infinitely
Classified under:
Context examples:
Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than Dr.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“Sir,” said my uncle, raising his hat in his most impressive manner, “I am infinitely obliged to you. With the referee’s permission, there is nothing for it but to shift the stakes.”
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I wish to soothe him, yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live?
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?”
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill—all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Still stronger, however, had been the influence of the great French war; for, however well matched the nations might be in martial exercises, there could be no question but that our neighbors were infinitely superior to us in the arts of peace.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave, as well as spin.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“You will be so infinitely dearer to me, my Catherine, than either Anne or Maria: I feel that I shall be so much more attached to my dear Morland's family than to my own.”
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
A measure of resolution used when a system's response y (such as image-displayed activity concentration) to an ideal infinitely narrow spatially distributed input shows a width in its values surrounding a maximum when plotted against a locating variable x (such as distance relative to this input location).
(Full Width at Half Maximum, NCI Thesaurus)
