The Collaborative International Dictionary
Grandmotherly \Grand"moth"er*ly\, a. Like a grandmother in age or manner; kind; indulgent.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1842, from grandmother + -ly (1).
Wiktionary
a. 1 In the manner of a grandmother 2 Having the characteristics of a grandmother
Usage examples of "grandmotherly".
Therefore genes for becoming reproductively infertile in middle age became more numerous, since they were carried in the bodies of grandchildren whose survival was assisted by grandmotherly altruism.
The old woman was stiff-backed, as alert as a hawk-bat on the lookout for prey, and the downiness of her white hair, which should have softened her appearance, should have made her grandmotherly, instead gave her the aspect of some mad Force wizard from a scary bedtime story.
There was and remains only one reason for his elaborate staging of the grandmotherly resurrection scene: the Materns, especially the teeth-grinding branch of the family, descended from the medieval robber Materna, by way of Grandma, who was a genuine Matern -- she had married her cousin -- down to the baptizand Walter Matern, had an innate feeling for grandiose, nay operatic scenes.
He congratulated the grandmotherly creator of the inside-out marble mocha whipped cream cake, the vivacious young matron with her brazil nut caramel angel cake, the delicate young man who was so proud of his sour cream chocolate velvet icebox cake, and finally the winner in the teenage class.
Living with a father who doted on her following her mother's death, Iridal had been raised by a grandmotherly nanny.
As they pulled up their convoy of four minitractors to the entrance of the Helvetia warehouse, Harbin saw that there were only two people on duty there, and one of them was a woman, gray-haired and grandmotherly, but with a hard, scowling face.
But perhaps the worst drawback of Darius's new position was the long and irregular hours, due partly to the influences of Saint Monday and of the scenes above indicated but not described, and partly to the fact that the employees were on piece-work and entirely unhampered by grandmotherly legislation.
The chair disintegrated into powdery wood meal, rose up in a cloud which proliferated, a sumptuously illumined monument to transience, and settled on Grandmother Matern, who had not, as might be supposed, taken her cue from the chair and turned to grandmotherly dust.