heartlikeadj.adv.

1600 R. Surflet tr. C. Estienne & J. Liébault Maison Rustique iii. v. 432 Garden plums and hartlike cherries.

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory ii. 79/1 This leaf is..heart-like in the mean, or part next the stalk.

1724 P. Blair Pharmaco-botanologia ii. 93 The spiked Flowers on the upper part of the Stalk are small, dark Blue, upon short Footstalks, and succeeded by flat, furrowed, Heart-like and pouched Seed Vessels, containing small seeds.

1776 E. M. da Costa Elements Conchol. 275 The two shells do not close, but leave a large oval or heart-like gap.

1828 Trans. Royal Irish Acad. 15 Science 144 The whole area of this heartlike curve is equal to the following definite integral.

1899 Success with Flowers Dec. 69/2 The Dicentra, or ‘Bleeding Heart’ of our grandmothers' gardens, had a wonderfully pretty effect with its hanging, heartlike flowers of crimson and white.

a1933 J. A. Thomson Biol. for Everyman (1934) I. x. 170 Sea-urchins or Echinoids. Mostly of globular shape, but sometimes heart-like, or depressed like a thin cake (‘sand-dollars’).

1987 W. Styron Tidewater Morning (1994) 89 I thought of Miss Slocum, who was a buxom woman of about thirty with an open, dimpled, heartlike face scrubbed mirror-bright.

2008 Oklahoman (Nexis) 13 Feb. 1 e The nature of the pastry as it puffs during baking produces a variety of heartlike shapes.

1844 E. B. Barrett Poems II. 13 His brain beat heart-like.

2003 P. Murray Evening of Long Goodbyes iv. 132 The front door could be seen to pulse, heart-like, with each blow, the frame beginning to splinter and the hinges to give.