Adjectively

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. In the way that an adjective functions or operates, emphasizing a quality or attribute rather than an action
2. After the fashion of an adjective, modifying or describing a noun by expressing its characteristic or state
3. In the manner characteristic of an adjective, serving to qualify or describe something by its nature or property

Etymology: "Adjectively" is an adverb, and its history is simply that of the suffix at its end. The "-ly" in English descends from Old English "-līċe," which was itself built on a word meaning "body" or "form" (the same root that gives "like" and "-like"). Over the Proto-Germanic period, a stem "*līka-" came to mean "resembling" or "having the form of," and by the time of Old English this sense was productive enough to be attached to nouns and adjectives to say "in the manner of." The suffix is therefore a fossilised trace of a comparison: a "lovely" thing is one that resembles love in its form, and an "adjectively" phrase is one carried out in the manner of an adjective. English then made it unusually flexible, so that a single adjective can be pulled apart into an adverb, with "adjectively" meaning in the way that a modifier modifies.