Definition of "downright"
downright
adjective
comparative more downright, superlative most downright
(obsolete) Directed vertically; coming straight down.
Quotations
Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,Is either slain or wounded dangerously;I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:
c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]
We thinke the heavens enjoy their SphericallTheir round proportion embracing all.But yet their various and perplexed course,Observ’d in divers ages doth enforceMen to finde out so many Eccentrique parts,Such divers downe-right lines, such overthwarts,As disproportion that pure forme. […]
1611, John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, London: Samuel Macham
Quotations
Her husband was evidently a sensible man, and he might have given his wife a little more sense than she could have derived from her downright father and her silly mother-in-law, who were really as great a pair of noodles as ever were exhibited in the pages of a modern novel, under the cognomen of "amiable rustics."
1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, page 237
There were miners from Klondyke, hunters from the backwoods, troopers from the Northwest Frontier Police, and included were some of the “hardest cases” that the land of the maple leaf ever produced; these were past-masters in the use of unique expletives, and for downright and original profanity it would hardly be possible to find their equal.
1907, George Witton, chapter 5, in Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of Breaker Morant’s Bushveldt Carbineers
English words and thought seem too downright a medium into which to render these evanescent, half-expressed sentences and poems—vague as the misty mountain scenery of her country, with no pronouns at all, and without verb inflections.
1920, Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Translator’s Note
Using plain direct language; accustomed to express opinions directly and bluntly; blunt.
Quotations
There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable.
1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter 4, in Emma: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II or III), London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray
Quotations
For although in that ancient and diffused adoration of Idols, unto the Priests and subtiler heads, the worship perhaps might be symbolicall, and as those Images some way related unto their deities; yet was the Idolatry direct and down-right in the people […] who may be made beleeve that any thing is God […] .
1650, Thomas Browne, chapter I, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], 3rd book, page 5
adverb
not comparable
Quotations
(obsolete) Straight down; perpendicularly.
Quotations
The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.
1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley
(obsolete) Plainly, unambiguously; directly.
Quotations
Rosalind. Not true in love?Celia. Yes, when he is in; but I think he is not in.Rosalind. You have heard him swear downright he was.
c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene iv]
(obsolete) Without delay; at once.
Quotations
The reading of this Paper put Mrs. Bull in ſuch a Paſſion, that ſhe fell dovvnright into a Fit, and they vvere forc’d to give her a good quantity of the Spirit of Hartſhorn before ſhe recover’d.
1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “An Account of the Conference between Mrs. Bull and Don Diego Dismallo”, in John Bull in His Senses: Being the Second Part of Law is a Bottomless-Pit. […], Edinburgh: […] James Watson, […], page 18