surely

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slow but sure

Slow or incremental but yielding steady, dependable progress. It's going to be slow but sure writing my thesis, as I have to balance my part-time job with my research. A: "Hey, how's the new novel coming along?" B: "It's been slow but sure."

See also: but, slow, sure

slowly but surely

At a slow or incremental pace but making steady, dependable progress. I've been writing my thesis slowly but surely—it will probably take me all year to finish it, but it's getting there! A: "Hey, how's the new novel coming along?" B: "Ah, slowly but surely!"

surely you jest

You must be joking. Surely you jest! I know there's a lot of oddball fields that are crazy lucrative, but I'm pretty selling bees as pets isn't one of them. We're getting bonuses this year? Ha, surely you jest.

slow but sure

and slowly but surely

slow but unstoppable. Bob's progress on his novel was slow but sure. Nancy is finishing the paint job on her house, slowly but surely.

See also: but, slow, sure

slow but sure

Gradual or plodding but certain to finish, as in Slow but sure this book's getting written. This idiom was first recorded in 1562, although the idea is much older. A related phrase appears in the proverb slow and steady wins the race, which is the moral of Aesop's fable about the race between a tortoise and a hare, which stopped to nap during the race and therefore lost.

See also: but, slow, sure

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

slow but (or and) sure

not quick but achieving the required result eventually. proverb

See also: but, slow, sure

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

slowly but ˈsurely

used for describing definite but slow progress in something: Attitudes to women at work are changing slowly but surely.

slow but sure

Plodding but reliable. This proverbial term dates from the early seventeenth century, and the idea is as old as Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare. “This snail’s slow but sure,” wrote John Marston in his 1606 play The Fawn (3:1).

See also: but, slow, sure

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References in classic literature ?

They were animals, then, and not natives, who had made the inroad, for surely the latter would have left nothing behind.

View in context

In view of the amounts of criticism constantly being heaped upon English people who come to Wales and speak English surely it would have been more politically correct for the Celts to learn the language which was then spoken in 'England' rather than force the 'English' to speak Celtic?

heading

Surely with more money in the economy overall, more can be spent on educating the incomers to learn the natural language.

Your LETTERS: Welcome marina

Regardless of religion, or denomination the best evangelists are surely those who live their faith yet Mr.

Evangelist needs to build bridges

The Sussex threesome are slowly, but surely building themselves a strong fanbase and garnering critical acclaim at every turn.

The Razz: Keane Somewhere Only We Know HHHHI

Surely Eade and Webber can both be charged over the death of Jimmy Mulligan and surely there were plenty of fingerprints as well as drugs in the car to convict somebody?

Don't let them get away with it

Citizens must surely be fed up with having their town ripped to bits with grandiose schemes.

Outrage

Surely the idea of marriage is the creation of children and those that have children outside marriage are sinning against God's law just as surely as a divorce.

Letter: Why can't a divorcee remarry in church?

She sees the religious changes of his ministry as consolidating Henry VIII's royal supremacy rather than moving in a Protestant direction, and she is surely right in viewing the dissolution of the chantries as being motivated by the desire to confiscate their endowments rather than a theological denial of the efficacy of prayers for the dead.

Edward VI

Surely at our petitions, El Nino de Atocha will bring the Bread of Life and the Living Water.

Sole child

So, justifiably exhilarated by this benchmark birthday, the company held what amounted to a ten-day party based at Operan, Stockholm's Royal Opera House, surely one of the few opera houses in the entire world to boast of a major restaurant within its walls.

Swedish rhapsody

To be faithful to this "mystery" dimension is a spiritual challenge, and this surely forbids obscuring the version with English words that take liberties with the sacred text.

Norm2: fidelity to the sacred worship

If Baudelaire was still concerned with "form," then Rimbaud, surely a modernist, was consciously summoning a world of antiform, and said so explicitly.

Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 60s to the Early 90s

Surely his points about culture could have been adequately made without the distracting beating of the dead Clausewitzian horse.

A History of Warfare

Had anyone suggested a year ago that generalinterest books, by and about theoretical physicists would become wildly popular, the response would undoubtedly have been, "Surely you're joking." That changed when "Surely You're Joking, Mr.

Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study

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