-ly

• IPA^(key): /li/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

  • (UK) IPA^(key): [liː]
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): [lɪ]
  • (US) IPA^(key): [li]
  • (New Zealand) IPA^(key): [ɫiː]

From Middle English -ly, -li, -lik, -lich, -like, from Old English -līċ, from Proto-West Germanic *-līk, from Proto-Germanic *-līkaz (“having the body or form of”), from *līką (“body”) (whence lich). In form, probably influenced by Old Norse -ligr (“-ly”) (Norwegian Bokmål -lig, Faroese -ligur, Icelandic -legur). Cognate with Dutch -lijk, German -lich, Danish -lig and Swedish -lig. Doublet of -like, more at like.

-ly

1. Used to form adjectives from nouns, the adjectives having the sense of "behaving like, or having a nature typical of what is denoted by the noun" Similar in meaning to -like but most often paired with animate nouns.

   ‎man + ‎-ly → ‎manly

   ‎comrade + ‎-ly → ‎comradely

2. Used to form adjectives from nouns, the adjectives having the sense of "appearing like, resembling, or having the likeness of what is denoted by the noun".

   ‎bloom + ‎-ly → ‎bloomly

   ‎muscle + ‎-ly → ‎muscly

3. Used to form adjectives from nouns specifying time intervals, the adjectives having the sense of "occurring at such intervals".

   ‎month + ‎-ly → ‎monthly

   ‎day + ‎-ly → ‎daily

• -ish
• -like
• -y
• (suggesting degree) -ous
• (suggesting degree) -some
• (likeness or resemblance) -oid, quasi-, para-, -form/-iform, -esque, -some, (restricted to casual registers) -ass, (forms adjectives from nouns only) -like

From Middle English -ly, -li, -liche, from Old English -līċe.

-ly

2. Used to form adverbs from adjectives and nouns.

   ‎sudden + ‎-ly → ‎suddenly

   ‎eerie + ‎-ly → ‎eerily

   ‎year + ‎-ly → ‎yearly

   ‎gluey + ‎-ly → ‎gluily

   ‎docile + ‎-ly → ‎docilely

   ‎irretrievable + ‎-ly → ‎irretrievably

   ‎sly + ‎-ly → ‎slyly

   ‎whole + ‎-ly → ‎wholly

   ‎ugly + ‎-ly → ‎uglily

   ‎ill + ‎-ly → ‎illy

   ‎subtle + ‎-ly → ‎subtly

   ‎disheartening + ‎-ly → ‎dishearteningly

3. Used to form company or brand names.

   ‎book + ‎-ly → ‎Bookly

   ‎musical + ‎-ly → ‎Musical.ly

   ‎clue + ‎-ly → ‎Cluely

In prescriptive usage, derived adverbs in -ly are often preferred to those which are identical in form to the base adjective (e.g., badly instead of bad), despite the fact that the latter have been in continuous use since the earliest stages of the language and represent the norm in languages closely related to English, such as Dutch and German. This is the cause of hypercorrections such as I feel badly (where feel actually represents a copular verb, which traditionally requires an adjectival complement rather than an adverb).

Various sound changes and spelling changes occur for -ly:

• If an adjective ends with a consonant followed by y, it changes into i before adding the suffix (e.g. ready > readily, easy > easily). Speakers who pronounce final unstressed -y as /i/ replace this vowel sound with /ɪ/ or /ə/ before -ly.
  • If an adjective ends with -ary, the stress is often moved to the -a- in the derived adjective in -arily.
• If an adjective ends with ll, one l drops out to avoid a triple letter (e.g. full > fully, shrill > shrilly). The pronunciation may or may not be simplified to have a single /l/ sound: this is normal in frequent words such as fully, but less frequent words such as shrilly may be pronounced with double /ll/.
• If an adjective ends with a syllabic /l̩/ (spelled -le after a consonant), euphony causes the -le to drop out. Examples include -ably and -ibly, but also noble > nobly, ample > amply, and idle > idly, among others.
• For many speakers of non-rhotic accents, if this suffix is appended to words in -lar /lə/, the resulting sequence /ləli/~/ləlɪ/ may be haplologically simplified to /li/~/ləlɪ/, resulting in pronunciations of words like particularly and regularly such as /pəˈtɪkjəli/, /ˈɹɛɡjəli/ (as if spelt *particuly and *reguly). This is especially common in colloquial speech and for frequently-used words, so specularly is usually something like /ˈspɛkjələli/, not */ˈspɛkjəli/.
• Adjectives ending in -ic generally take -ally (public > publicly being an exception).
• If an adjective ends with -ed, the pronunciation is sometimes changed from /d/ or /t/ to /ɪd/ before -ly. For example, deserved /dɪˈzɜː(ɹ)vd/ and deservedly /dɪˈzɜː(ɹ)vɪdli/.

• -ally

• -yl, YL

From Old English -līċ. Related to lich.

• -lich, -liche, -lyche, -lych, -li, -lie, -lye, -like, -lik, -lyke, -lyk, -le, -lei, -lice, -lic, -liȝ, -lece, -luch

• IPA^(key): /-liː/, /-liːt͡ʃ/, /-lit͡ʃ/

-ly (comparative -lyere, superlative -lyest)

2. Used to form adjectives from nouns, the adjectives having the sense of "like or characteristic of what is denoted by the noun".
3. Appended to adjectives in order to render meaning of the adjective either more intense or more approximate.

   E.g. ded (“no longer alive”), dedly (“causing, resembling or subject to death”); schort (“not long”), shortly (“momentary; very brief”)

• -ly is generally the most common variant of this suffix, though in some words, other variants may be more common, such as -lich(e).

• English: -ly
• Scots: -lie

• “-lī, suf.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 7 April 2018.

From Old English -līċe, itself a combination of the adjective-forming suffix -līċ (see etymology 1 above) and the adverbial suffix -e.

• -lich, -liche, -lyche, -lych, -li, -lie, -lye, -like, -lik, -licke, -lyke, -lyk, -lycke, -leche, -le, -lei, -loche, -lice, -liȝ, -luche

• IPA^(key): /-liː/, /-liːt͡ʃ(ə)/, /-lit͡ʃ(ə)/

-ly (comparative -lyere, superlative -lyest)

2. Used to form adverbs from adjectives, and nouns; the adverbs having the sense of "in the manner of what is denoted by the adjective/noun".
3. Optionally appended to adverbs without suffixes with no change to the meaning.

• As with its adjectival equivalent, -ly is generally the most common variant of this suffix, though in some words, other variants may be more common, such as -lich(e).

• English: -ly
• Scots: -lie

• “-lī, suf.(2).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 7 April 2018.

• -lee

• IPA^(key): /-ˈliː/

From Middle English -ly, -li, -lik, -lich, -like, from Old English -līċ, from Proto-West Germanic *-līk.

-ly

1. Used to form adjectives from nouns.

From Middle English -ly, -li, -liche, from Old English -līċe.

-ly

1. Used to form adverbs from adjectives and nouns.