Draconically

From Draconic +‎ -ally or Draconical +‎ -ly.

Draconically (comparative more Draconically, superlative most Draconically)

1. Alternative letter-case form of draconically (“in a draconic (very severe or strict; draconian) manner”).
   • 1641, A True Description, or Rather a Parallel betweene Cardinall Wolsey, Arch-Bishop of York, and William Laud, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, , →OCLC, page 6:

     They were alſo in their judiciall Courts equally tyrannous; the one in the Chancerie, the other in the High Commiſſion: both of them at the Councell boord, and in the Starre-chamber alike Draconically ſupercilious.

   • 1858 February 20, “Napoleonic Logic”, in Punch, or The London Charivari, volume XXXIV, London: Bradbury and Evans, , →ISSN, →OCLC, page 77, column 1:

     Whereas three Italians, on two different occasions, have attempted the life of the Emperor , therefore he revenges himself on the French and English—by crippling still more Draconically the few liberties left to the former, and by attempting to suppress the constitutional privileges that are dear to the latter.

   • 1862 June, “Homeric Translations”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume LXV, number CCCXC, London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, , →OCLC, page 779, column 1:

     But Mr. Wright has to make good his title against Cowper; and no one that knows Cowper, a true poet, manly and tender, graceful and vigorous, in his translation no less than in his original works, will doubt that the task is likely to be a hard one. Professor Arnold, a sufficiently competent judge, has already pronounced that Mr. Wright has failed—that he simply reproduces Cowper’s manner, and so has, as it is somewhat Draconically expressed, ‘no right to exist.’

   • 1869 January 16, “Public Indecencies”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume XXVII, number 690, London: Spottiswoode and Co., , →ISSN, →OCLC, page 78, column 1:

     A few years ago we heard of the puritication of the Haymarket and its purlieus. We were assured that in the midnight hours Coventry Street was as decorous as Great Ormond Street at noonday. Still later we were assure that the night houses in those pleasant shades were quite reformed and cleansed. And we believed that all this was quite true. The picture was engaging; the results Arcadian; and the character of the law—sufficiently strict, yet not Draconically austere—was admirably vindicated.

   • 1872, Henry Kingsley, “I Go to School”, in The Harveys. , volume I, London: Tinsley Bros., , →OCLC, pages 61–62:

     I don’t know why I was affected, but I was. I suspect that people like myself are easily affected, and that in the perfectly governed state of the future we shall all be Draconically put to death, and leave the virtuous citizens to bore one another until their time comes.

   • 1876, F W Newman, “Moral Theism. From The ‘Langham Magazine.’”, in Miscellanies, volume II (Essays, Tracts or Addresses Moral and Religious), London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., , published 1887, →OCLC, page 321:

     If children are taught that they are the creatures of mere impulse, and that self-controul is impossible, they will follow impulse with no effort at self-controul; and when “I could not help it” is a current excuse for misconduct, it justifies the retort, “Then I cannot help beating you.” Law must and will become Draconically severe, when Fatalism explodes the doctrine of Self-controul.

   • 1891, G V Garland, “The Three Angels”, in The Practical Teaching of the Apocalypse, London; New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green, and Co. , →OCLC, chapter XXI (The Lamb on the Mount Zion—Rev. xiv.), page 324:

     He is warned that ‘he will be tormented in fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb.’ It is also added that ‘the smoke of their torment is ascending for ages of ages: and that those have no rest day and night, who are worshipping the Beast and his Image, nor any one who is receiving the mark of his name.’ The warning reveals the truth that, whoever are thus worshipping the Draconically inspired world power and its lawless representative Imperial Ruler, are already drinking of the wine of the fury of God.

   • 1900, George Saintsbury, “‘Faultlessness’”, in A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day , volume I (Classical and Mediæval Criticism), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead, and Co.; Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II (Latin Criticism), chapter II (The Contemporaries of Quintilian), page 285:

     In nothing, perhaps, is this tendency of ancient criticism better shown than in its attitude to the question of Faultlessness. Of course, on this question there were two parties, with many subdivisions in each. There were the extreme classics of that classic time, the wooden persons of whom Martial tells us, for whom it was enough if a thing was not “correct,” to whom a fault was a fault—indelible, incompensable, to be judged off-hand and Draconically.

   • 1905 August 9, Sri Aurobindo, “On a Proposed Examination for Teachers”, in The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, volume 1 (Early Cultural Writings), Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, published 2003, →ISBN, appendix 1 (Baroda Speeches and Reports), “Opinions Written as Acting Principal” section, page 749:

     Rule 10. This rule is Draconically harsh. Removal ought on no account to be made the penalty of a Departmental Examination; the ordinary principle that the passing of the Examination will count in promotion is quite sufficient.

   • 1937, Alfred Vagts, “Parliaments and Preparedness”, in A History of Militarism: Romance and Realities of a Profession, New York, N.Y.: W W Norton & Company, Inc,, →OCLC, part IV (Post-War Militarization of Society), chapter XII (Totalitarian Militarism), page 451:

     Not only are anti-military crimes and misdemeanors strictly dealt with, but officers are members of the high Volksgerichtshof before which, in a Star Chamber procedure of secrecy, cases of treason, attacks on the Führer and so on, are adjudicated and punished as Draconically as by a military court in war time.

   • 1938, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, “Government in the Confucian Ideology”, in Government in Republican China (McGraw-Hill Studies in Political Science), New York, N.Y.; London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., →OCLC, 1st part (Movements), chapter I (Confucianism), pages 18–19:

     An official, although he might value his power, was regarded in the society at large almost as much for what he was as for the dignity with which the office invested him. This arose from his peculiar role, in which his function was to provide a model of propriety in his private and public life rather than to interfere in the lives of others. Interference, to be sure, occurred—sharply, Draconically, directed more against the social group of the offender than against the offender himself, on the theory that it was the function of the group to keep its members in line with the common-sense traditions.

   • 1942, Esmé Wingfield-Stratford, “The Soldier”, in Churchill: The Making of a Hero, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, →OCLC, section 1, page 35:

     The callow subaltern who, when he might be out in the open air, or even partaking with his brother officers in such relaxation as they (though not perhaps Mrs. Ormiston Chant) might prescribe as the proper complement to such activities, spent his time fugging indoors with fat tomes, probably by Germans, on military theory, or in the study of what, at public schools, was branded as “stinks”, would need to be a conspicuously good fellow and efficient sportsman not to be put down—perhaps in the painfully literal sense of the horse-trough—as an outsider and a prig. Indeed, so inviolate was the cult of genteel amateurishness, that professional topics, or “shop”, were Draconically tabooed in conversation off parade.

   • 1948 summer, Franz Alexander, “The Price of Peace”, in Child Study: A Quarterly Journal of Parent Education, New York, N.Y.: Child Study Association of America, Inc., →OCLC, pages 72–73:

     The instability of totalitarian nations comes primarily from the fact that in such countries the individual members have no freedom of expression and action. They must be restrained by terror and violence. They constitute therefore a permanent menace to their neighbors. Their internal peace can be preserved only with spoils obtained by subjugation of other nations or by terror. Every form of hostility, even constructive criticism directed against leadership, is Draconically suppressed.

   • 1949, Werner Knop, “Atomic Age”, in Prowling Russia’s Forbidden Zone: A Secret Journey into Soviet Germany (A Borzoi Book), New York, N.Y.: Alfred A Knopf, Inc., →OCLC, pages 137–138:

     The uranium miners work up to twelve hours a day, urged on by Soviet convict soldiers, who act as overseers, and who themselves are punished Draconically if their charges fail to meet the daily norms.

   • 1951 April, F. Beck , W. Godin , translated by Eric Mosbacher and David Porter, “The Iron Commissar”, in Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, page 31:

     An interesting example was provided in 1937 of how far the government could go in genuinely sounding public opinion without endangering its own position. The subject chosen for the experiment was characteristically a nonpolitical one, lying outside the main stream of critical questions of the day. It was the draft of the law, subsequently Draconically imposed, forbidding abortion, which had hitherto been permitted under official auspices in cases not considered dangerous.

   • 1954 winter, H. Brand, “East Germany: The Uprising of June 17”, in Dissent: A Quarterly of Socialist Opinion, volume 1, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Dissent Publishing Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, section III, page 40:

     At the base of the trouble was the regime’s policy of collectivization of agriculture, decided upon by the SED conference in summer 1952. This, combined with increased delivery quotas, non-fulfillment of which was Draconically punished, caused a great exodus from the land.

   • 1964, James Gould Cozzens, “The Guns of the Enemy”, in Children and Others, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., →LCCN, →OCLC, part II (Away at School), page 167:

     Potts was the one who reported, and Doctor Holt rewarded him, Draconically, by informing Potts that he was no longer a member of the school.

   • 1990 , Robert Conquest, “Nations in Torment”, in The Great Terror: A Reassessment, revised edition, New York, N.Y.; Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, published 1991, →ISBN, book II (The Yezhov Years), page 283:

     Those who came before a court were judged according to the Criminal Code, whose long Article 58 covered all forms of remotely political crime. This article was broad enough, or so it might have been thought, to encompass anyone the NKVD wished to “repress.” And it had long been Draconically interpreted.

     Uncapitalized in the 1st edition (1968).

   • 1992, Abba Eban, “Palestine in World War II”, in Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN, page 68:

     It was Churchill who coined the words “squalid war” to describe the events of 1945 to 1947. All the hated restrictions on Jewish immigration, whether “legal” or “illegal,” were Draconically applied.

   • 2000, Gerd Fuchs, translated by Heather Hanford, “The accordion”, in The Emigrants: From Hamburg to the New World, Hamburg: Petersen Verlag, →ISBN, page 115:

     However, there were not many opportunities to play or discover anything new in the overcrowded huts; on top of that, the German officials were Draconically strict. This meant they soon grew bored.

   • 2000 November 10, Mary Brownfield, “Breaching Carmel River mouth no longer just about a guy and a shovel”, in The Carmel Pine Cone, volume 86, number 45, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., →OCLC, page 13A, column 2:

     Weeks added that the county must show its commitment to establishing permanent guidelines for breaching the river mouth. “As long as we work with the agencies, I don’t think they’ll come in and Draconically regulate us,” Potter said.