Casually

How to spell casually

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce casually

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does casually mean?

1. adverbIn a relaxed, informal, or unconcerned manner, without much effort or planning.

Casually in a sentence

• He dressed casually for the office party, choosing jeans instead of a suit.

• She mentioned the promotion casually, as though it were no big deal.

Where does casually come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin noun casus, meaning 'a fall' or 'an event happening by chance', which itself came from cadere, the verb meaning 'to fall'. From casus the Latin adjective casualis was formed, describing something that happened by accident or by chance. English took it through Old French as 'casual' in the late 1300s, where it carried the sense of fortuitous or unplanned, and the adverb 'casually' followed naturally by adding the familiar -ly ending. Over time the meaning drifted from 'by chance' toward the modern senses of being relaxed, informal, or unconcerned, while keeping that older idea of something done without effort or plan. The same casus root quietly survives in relatives such as 'occasion', 'cadence', and even 'accident', all sharing the underlying image of falling or happening. The spelling trap sits in the middle: writers reach for a single 's' or forget the 'u', so it helps to picture the base word 'casual' plus the standard -ly.

How the word is built

• cas- (from Latin casus: a fall, chance)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)