tensely, adv.
(ˈtɛnslɪ)
[f. tense a. + -ly2.]
In a tense manner.
1. Tightly.
| 1782 A. Monro Compar. Anat. (ed. 3) 16 The cellular part of the peritoneum..is tensely stretched over them. 1839 Longfellow Beatrice xiv, Even as a cross-bow breaks, when 'tis discharged, Too tensely drawn the bow-string and the bow. 1846 Hawthorne Mosses i. v, And girdled tensely by her virgin zone. 1860 O. W. Holmes Elsie V. xxiii, To keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and the peak of the saddle. |
2. fig. With intellectual, mental, or nervous strain or tension; intensely.
| 1778 W. H. Marshall Minutes Agric., Digest 2 Mathematics (..perhaps this, in preference to every other science, teaches and habituates Mankind to think systematically and tensely). 1849 Tait's Mag. XVI. 220 We left,..deeply moved, and with nerves more tensely strung. 1893 Nat. Observ. 23 Dec. 127/2 There are dozens most tensely anxious for the restitution. |