pragmaticallyadv.
/praɡˈmatᵻkli/, U.S. /præɡˈmædək(ə)li/ 1. Officiously, interferingly; impudently; opinionatedly, dogmatically; conceitedly, vainly. Now rare.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > belief > expressed belief, opinion > extreme opinion, dogmatism > [adverb]
magistrallya1603
pragmatically1606
magisterially1625
thetically1657
dogmatically1664
magisteriously1673
judiciously1728
unargumentatively1840
cocksurely1887
the world > action or operation > doing > activity or occupation > acting in another's business or intervention > [adverb] > officiously
officiously1598
pragmaticallya1716
1606 W. Birnie Blame of Kirk-buriall xix. sig. F3v For such patrociny that Kirk-buriall procutors doe vse pragmatically to pleade.
1653 J. Gauden Hieraspistes 7 Nor..am I pragmatically suggesting, what I might foolishly imagine fittest to be done in State affairs.
a1695 J. Scott Pract. Disc. (1697) I. 91 People will attend to their own Business and not be intermedling pragmatically in anothers Diocese.
a1716 O. Blackall Wks. (1723) I. vi. 53 Not pragmatically prying into their Secrets or meddling with their Concerns.
1769 J. Cleland Addit. Articles to Specimen of Etimol. Vocab. p. vi The Gentlemen of the Faculty..did me the justice to see that my evestigation of their scientific terms, was purely in a philological intention, clear of any impertinence of pragmatically offering lessons to them in their profession.
1800 L.-P. Anquetil Summary Universal Hist. III. 129 It was expected that when Camillus returned to Rome, he would complain of the young military tribune, who had pragmatically caused his experience to be preferred to that of his colleague.
1851 S. Judd Margaret (rev. ed.) I. i. xii. 117 He felt himself to be of more consequence than he had ever been before, and although exercising his function rather pragmatically, he made himself greatly useful.
1874 W. Collins No Name 445 His thin flaxen mustaches were no longer pragmatically waxed and twisted into a curl.
1906 Truth (Sydney) 20 May 5/8 As long as they are not Wesleyan wowserish, pragmatically Puritanical, and noxiously Nonconformist-Conscience-like.
2.
a. In practical terms, rather than with regard to theory or ideals; from a practical or pragmatic point of view; in practice, practically; realistically; stoically; in a manner determined by practical advantage rather than by principle.
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > advantage > expediency > expedience > [adverb] > in a pragmatic manner
pragmatically1846
1846 Milwaukee (Wisconsin Territory) Daily Courier 3 Apr. [He] observed, very pragmatically, that it would ill comport with his sacred functions to permit the stranger to exchange worlds..without furnishing him with the means for his passage [sc. by administering the last rites].
1866 G. Stephens Old-Northern Runic Monuments I. i. 94 I have tried to decipher them pragmatically, practically.
1877 C. W. Shields Final Philos. Index of Subj. 592 Philosophic historians who have pragmatically referred all civilization to Divine Providence, to kings and statesmen, to great men, to great ideas.
1884 Jrnl. Hellenic Stud. 5 266 Of the seven preserved plays of Sophocles, there are three which as regards mere story are pragmatically dependent.
1915 W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage xlvi. 224 They were so anxious to have a studio of their own that they calculated pragmatically that the cost would not be much greater than that of living in a hotel.
1966 Lancet 17 Sept. 635/2 As we say pragmatically in Huddersfield, ‘C'est la vie, like!’
1993 N.Y. Times 26 Mar. a 2/2 So successful is he at reducing his pragmatically hawkish opinions to manageable television proportions that some..worry that he is prey to accusations that he is not a deep thinker.
2005 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 5 Oct. b1/1 Six years ago he thought pragmatically, how do I get to be mayor? And so he became a Republican.
b. spec. in Philosophy. In terms of consequences or effects; in a manner determined by or relating to pragmatism; in terms of pragmatism.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > pragmatism > [adverb]
pragmatically1902
pragmatistically1907
the mind > language > linguistics > other schools of linguistics > [adverb] > other spec.
pragmatically1902
psycholinguistically1951
kinesically1955
sociolinguistically1961
1902 W. James Varieties Relig. Experience 448 (note) Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his punitive justice.
1909 W. James Pluralistic Universe viii. 321 Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related.
1926 Philos. Rev. 35 523 Pragmatism comes to our aid... Everything is as if realism were true; and the as if is so strong that we may consider our instinctive and actually unescapable belief pragmatically justified.
1969 C.-Y. Cheng Peirce's & Lewis's Theories of Induction xii. 129 Induction cannot be pragmatically significant in a strong sense.
1999 Bull. Symbolic Logic 5 392 Quine..came to embrace a pragmatically induced Platonism.
3. Linguistics and Philosophy. In a manner determined by pragmatic features of language; in terms of pragmatics.
ΚΠ
1941 Philos. Sci. 8 182 It may sometimes be useful to distinguish what a sentence means inferentially from what it means pragmatically and semantically.
1948 Mind 57 358 The fault is not a fault of logic in the sense that the definition is formally self-contradictory. It is merely pragmatically self-refuting.
1964 E. A. Nida Toward Sci. Translating iii. 46 Some Pentecostals respond ‘pragmatically’ to a passage of the Scriptures by engaging in shouting and dancing.
1979 Jrnl. Philos. 76 180 It does not strictly involve an indexical element in the sentences themselves. Rather, there is a shift in certain implicatures pragmatically associated with the sentence occurrences.
1992 Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics 37 83 While the pragmatically unmarked word order is apparently verb-initial, a number of the typological characteristics of Yagua are ones that are not typical of verb-initial languages.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adv.1606