WILFULLY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does wilfully mean? 

• WILFULLY (adverb)
  The adverb WILFULLY has 1 sense:

1. in a willful manner

  Familiarity information: WILFULLY used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WILFULLY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a willful manner

Synonyms:

wilfully; willfully

Context example:

she had willfully deceived me

Pertainym:

wilful (done by design)

 Context examples 

Caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving anyone; and all that I can hope in this case is that she is deceiving herself.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In music she thought him unreasonable, and in the matter of opera not only unreasonable but wilfully perverse.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Wilfully had it disobeyed and won my eyes to speech, and now it was winning my tongue—ay, and my lips, for they were mad this moment to kiss the two small hands which had toiled so faithfully and hard.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

When my uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity of my own.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him, insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own—but still, from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

If you err wilfully, I shall devise a proportionate punishment.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)