Comparatively

How to spell comparatively

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce comparatively

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does comparatively mean?

1. adverbTo a moderate degree when measured against something else; relatively.

Comparatively in a sentence

• The new flat was comparatively cheap compared with the city centre.

• This winter has been comparatively mild for the region.

Where does comparatively come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb comparare, which meant 'to pair together' or 'to match', built from com- 'together' and par 'equal'. The same par root for 'equal' survives in everyday words such as 'par', 'parity', and 'compare' itself, all carrying the idea of weighing one thing against another. By the late Middle Ages the adjective 'comparative' had entered English through scholarly and grammatical use, where it described the form of an adjective used to compare, as in 'larger' or 'happier'. The adverb 'comparatively' followed, meaning 'when measured against something else', and from the 1600s it broadened into the loose modern sense of 'relatively' or 'fairly'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed 'a' in com-PAR-a-tively is easy to drop or swap, even though it echoes the visible 'compare' from which the word is built.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• par (equal, from Latin par)
• -ative (adjective-forming suffix)
• -ly (adverb-forming suffix)