footlesslyadv.

1909 National Advocate Aug. (National Temperance Soc.) 116/1 Scornfully referring to his brother inebriates as ‘tanks’ and ‘bums’—and that at a time when he is footlessly drunk himself!

1964 Connaught Tel. 29 Aug. 5 They were on a bit of a spree the day before. They were not footlessly drunk but they were drunk.

1916 H. W. Hill New Public Health (rev. ed.) xiii. 155 So long as governments permit infection to go unchecked, relying footlessly on physicians' reports alone, the persons who unwittingly become infected should have rights in suits of damages against such governments.

1930 Terril (Iowa) Rec. 29 May Old men climbing into the motor bus..to go to the cemetery and there to wander about footlessly reading the names on old tombstones.

1951 A. Polonsky World Above ii. v. 114 They passed here and there a despondent soul wandering footlessly about, waiting for nothing and going nowhere.

1967 J. W. Macfarlane in S. M. Farber & R. H. L. Wilson Teen-age Marriage & Divorce 50 The relationship between parents and their impact upon children, regarding which a superabundance has been written..extolling parenthood and footlessly damning parents.

2003 W. Jovanovich Temper of West 251 I recall footlessly saying to Fritz, 'Wouldn't it be perfect if Beethoven had written the Eroica in this very house'.

1965 M. Young Miss MacIntosh, my Darling lxi. 819 There were places of long, matted grasses drifting where only the birds stepped, footlessly as if their wings skimmed above the clouds.

1974 A. Wiseman Crackpot iv. 94 She pulled herself out from behind her constricting desk,..and moved, somehow footlessly, to the front of the class.

2015 E. Maddern Snowdonia Folk Tales i. 48 Headless, footlessly I stride, nothing's child, never born.