softly vs softly softly

softly

adv
  • In a soft manner; gently. 

  • Not loudly; nearly inaudibly. 

softly softly

adv
  • In a very tactful, careful, or nondisruptive manner. 

adj
  • Discreet, low-key, careful. 

How often have the words softly and softly softly occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )