Definition

Adverb: 1. In a manner that suggests great weight or heaviness: Moving or acting as if carrying a substantial physical burden. 2. In a serious, grave, or significant manner: Speaking, acting, or being delivered with profound importance, solemnity, or consequence.

Usage Examples

• He walked weightily across the creaking floorboards, each step a deliberate thud.
• The judge spoke weightily before pronouncing the sentence, emphasizing the gravity of the crime.
• The bad news settled weightily upon the entire team, silencing the room.
• She weightily considered the implications of her decision, knowing it would affect many people.

Advanced Usage

• Used figuratively for emotional or psychological burden: Often describes how a thought, feeling, or piece of information is borne or delivered.
  • The memory of his failure sat weightily on his conscience for years.
• In formal or rhetorical contexts: Frequently applied to speech, writing, or arguments that are intended to be authoritative and consequential.
  • The philosopher's arguments were weightily presented in his latest treatise.

Variants and Related Words

• Weighty (adjective): Having great weight; serious and important.
  • A weighty responsibility; a weighty tome.
• Weightiness (noun): The quality of being weighty.
  • The weightiness of the occasion was felt by all attendees.

Synonyms

• Heavily: With weight or pressure.
• Gravely: In a serious or solemn manner.
• Solemnly: In a formal and dignified manner.
• Ponderously: In a slow, clumsy manner due to great weight; dull and laborious.

Antonyms

• Lightly: With little weight; without serious thought.
• Flippantly: Not showing a serious or respectful attitude.
• Easily: Without difficulty or effort.

Related Phrases and Idioms

• To carry weightily: To bear something (literal or figurative) with a sense of its heaviness.
  • He carried his family's expectations weightily on his shoulders.
• To fall weightily: To drop or land with a heavy impact.
  • The old book fell weightily from the shelf.

Adverb

1. as something very heavy
   • she moved weightily
2. in a serious manner
   • the speech was weighty and it was weightily delivered