Adverb

(-)

Mainly or chiefly; for the most part; usually, generally, on the whole.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=72-3, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A punch in the gut , passage=Mostly , the microbiome is beneficial. It helps with digestion and enables people to extract a lot more calories from their food than would otherwise be possible. Research over the past few years, however, has implicated it in diseases from atherosclerosis to asthma to autism.}}

(obsolete) To the greatest extent; most.

* 1817 , , Northanger Abbey , [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mDUbXHRIbRIC&dq=northanger+abbey+search+austen&pg=PP1&ots=EDH1Xu36el&sig=J7fVUwXmydAD36S8oLTWv2-ICNk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA163,M1]:

She was to be their chosen visitor, she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she mostly prized [...]!

Adverb

(-)

On certain occasions, or in certain circumstances, but not always.

* (Jeremy Taylor)

It is good that we sometimes be contradicted.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=We made an odd party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip sometimes twice in a day.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.}}

(obsolete) On a certain occasion in the past; once.

* (William Shakespeare)

That fair and warlike form / In which the majesty of buried Denmark / Did sometimes march.

* :

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

*, II.3.7:

they detract, scoffe, and raile (saith one), and bark at me on every side; but I, like that Albanian dog sometimes given to Alexander for a present, vindico me ab illis solo contemptu ; I lie still, and sleep, vindicate myself by contempt alone.