gingerly

In a cautious and delicate manner; (very) carefully or cautiously.

He placed the glass jar gingerly on the concrete step.

In an other corner, Mistris Minx, a marchants wife, that will eate no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twentie shillings a pound, that lookes as simperingly as if she were besmeard, and iets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the canaries, […]

Chiefly of dancing or walking: done with small, dainty steps; daintily; also, with excessive delicacy; affectedly, mincingly.

Oh! ſhe lookes ſo ſugredly, ſo ſimpringly, ſo gingerly, ſo amarouſly, ſo amiably. […] [She] is ſuch an intycing ſhee-vvitch, carrying the charmes of your Ievvels about her. Oh!

Often of movements: very careful, cautious, or delicate.

We can honestly commend the Atlantic Monthly as the most able and spirited of American periodicals, at the present time, and we like it, moreover, because it dares have opinions and to express them in unmistakable terms, on subjects which when referred to at all, by most of the current magazines, are mentioned in the gingerliest namby-pamby style of common place neutrality.

But, ther's somethin' in the very look and voice of Jeems Strebling, even in his gingerly walk, that riles all the black drop in me.

Often of a person or the way they move: dainty, delicate; also, excessively delicate; affected, mincing.

All yᵉ rest of my trimmest, tricksiest, gingerliest ioyes, / But very tædious and most odious toyes?