Allegedly

How to spell allegedly

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce allegedly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does allegedly mean?

1. adverbAccording to what has been claimed or asserted, but without proof that it is true.

Allegedly in a sentence

• The suspect allegedly left the building minutes before the alarm sounded.

• The company allegedly overcharged thousands of customers for years.

Where does allegedly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends ultimately from the Latin verb allegare, formed from ad, meaning 'to', and legare, meaning 'to dispatch, depute, or send on a mission', so its earliest sense was something like 'to send forth' or 'to bring forward'. By the time it reached medieval Latin it had narrowed to the idea of citing or producing something as evidence in a legal setting, and it passed into Middle English through Old French in the 1300s as 'allege', meaning to declare or assert, especially without proof. The adjective 'alleged' then described something asserted but not yet proven, and the adverb 'allegedly' was layered on top with the everyday adverb ending -ly. Its modern flavour is firmly legal and journalistic: it flags a claim that has been made but not established. A useful spelling memory is that the middle holds a hidden, often unpronounced 'e' before the -dly, giving the careful four-syllable 'a-lleg-ed-ly' rather than 'a-lleg-dly', which is exactly where writers go wrong.

How the word is built

• al- (from Latin ad-, 'to')
• leg (from legare, 'to dispatch or send on a mission')
• -ed (past participle)
• -ly (adverb)