unalertly

[Alan W]

A while ago I had an email from a player suggesting Chi should accept the word unalertly.

I couldn't find this word in any dictionary, but that doesn't rule it out as a real word. It can be generated by standard constructions that we all use without thinking much about it (unalertly, you might say): either adding ly to the end of unalert or adding un to the front of alertly.

But do people ever say or write unalertly? Well not often, but I could find some examples with the help of Google Book Search, in passages that read quite naturally:

They had not been in the camp so they must have come out of the creek close by and unalertly walked right into the midst of the revenge-seeking Comanche horse-warriors.

It may be that I have awakened particularly unalertly today, but I cannot make any sense out of that whatsoever.

On one occasion, when I was hidden and watching the carcass of a Deer which a Lion had killed, to see what carnivorous animal might come to the feast, a Mountain Lion walked quietly and unalertly to it and commenced to eat.

Unalertly will be allowed in future, as a rare word.

[birdy]

Now that third example is quite a puzzle, Alan, since lions are an Old World cat and mountain lions are New World. Unless the author is writing fantasy or about escaped captive animals, that's an unusual pairing.

[Alan W]

Birdy, the quote is from a book called Watched by Wild Animals (1922), by Enos A. Mills, in a chapter titled "The Mountain Lion". The context makes it obvious that the author sometimes used lion to mean mountain lion.

On one occasion, when I was hidden and watching the carcass of a deer which a lion had killed to see what carnivorous animal might come to the feast, a mountain lion walked quietly and unalertly to it and commenced to eat. After a few minutes the lion suddenly bristled up and spat in the direction from which a grizzly bear presently appeared. With terrible snarling and threatening, the lion held on to the prize until the grizzly was within a few feet. He then leaped toward the grizzly with a snarl, struck at it, and dashed into the woods. The grizzly, without even looking round to see where the lion had gone, began eating.

To see what happened next, visit Project Gutenberg!