instrumentally

English

Etymology

From instrumental +‎ -ly.

Adverb

instrumentally (comparative more instrumentally, superlative most instrumentally)

  1. By means of an instrument or agency; as means to an end
    • 1760–1765, Edmund Burke, Tracts Relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland:
      They will argue that the end being essentially beneficial, the means become instrumentally so.
    • 1974, Thomas S. Szasz, chapter 8, in The Myth of Mental Illness, →ISBN, page 144:
      Institutionally based, restrictive relationships, such as those among family members or professional colleagues, must thus be contrasted with instrumentally based, nonrestrictive relationships serving the aims of practical pursuits, such as those between freely practicing experts and their clients or between sellers and buyers. In instrumentally structured situations it is not necessary for the participants to curb their needs, because the mere expression of needs in no way compels others to gratify them, as it tends to do in the family.
  2. With instruments of music
    an instrumentally accompanied song

Synonyms

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “instrumentally”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

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