Aubrey inquired, aloofly interested in the plot details of the narrative.
He greeted them aloofly, and a little negro boy proffered tiny cups of China tea.
Once in such a group she recognized the girl who had eyed her aloofly on the train coming home from boarding school.
They were still comically stiff-legged and bristly as they aloofly sniffed noses.
All her life she had gone about calmly and aloofly, her head in the clouds, her feet on mountain-tops.
aloofly though the Deanite lives, he is not altogether an unsocial being.
1530s, from a- (1) + Middle English loof "weather gage," also "windward direction," probably from Dutch loef (Middle Dutch lof) "the weather side of a ship." Originally a nautical order to keep the ship's head to the wind, thus to stay clear of a lee-shore or some other quarter; hence the figurative sense of "at a distance, apart" (1580s). Related: Aloofly; aloofness.
