Bluntly

How to spell bluntly

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bluntly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bluntly mean?

1. adverbIn a direct, frank manner, without softening or tact.

Bluntly in a sentence

• The manager told him quite bluntly that his proposal had been rejected.

• She answered bluntly that the budget simply would not stretch that far.

Where does bluntly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the adjective 'blunt', whose origins are a little murky but which appears in English from around the 1200s, first meaning 'dull' or 'lacking a sharp edge' and possibly relating to Old Norse 'blundra', meaning 'to shut the eyes' or 'doze', hinting at a sense of dullness or stupidity. Over time 'blunt' shifted from describing a physically dull blade to describing speech that is direct and abrupt, lacking the smoothing 'edge' of tact. The adverb 'bluntly' was then formed in the usual English way by adding the suffix '-ly', which itself descends from the Old English '-lice', meaning 'in the manner of'. So 'bluntly' literally means 'in a blunt manner', whether that manner is dull or, more often today, plainly outspoken. The spelling is regular once you see it as 'blunt' plus '-ly', with no letter doubled or dropped where the two parts meet.

How the word is built

• blunt (dull, abrupt)
• -ly (adverb suffix)