Anxiously

How to spell anxiously

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce anxiously

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does anxiously mean?

1. adverbIn a worried, nervous, or uneasy manner.

Anxiously in a sentence

• She waited anxiously for the test results to arrive.

• He glanced anxiously at the clock as the deadline approached.

Where does anxiously come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin adjective anxius, meaning 'troubled' or 'uneasy in the mind', which was built on the verb angere, meaning 'to choke, to squeeze, or to cause distress'. That original sense of physical tightness in the throat is a vivid clue to the feeling the word still describes, since worry can feel like a knot or constriction. English took the adjective 'anxious' in the early 1600s, and the adverb 'anxiously' followed naturally by adding the familiar -ly ending. The same angere root sits behind a surprising family of relatives, including 'anguish', 'anger', and even 'angina', all of which carry that idea of painful tightening. The spelling trap lies in the silent-feeling cluster 'xious', where the x stands in for a 'k' plus 'sh' sound, so writers must remember the x rather than spelling it as it sounds.

How the word is built

• anxi- (from Latin anxius: troubled, uneasy)
• -ous (adjective: full of)
• -ly (adverb)