Confidently

How to spell confidently

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce confidently

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confidently mean?

1. adverbIn a manner showing assurance and certainty, without doubt or hesitation.

Confidently in a sentence

• She walked into the interview and answered every question confidently.

• The surgeon spoke confidently about the chances of a full recovery.

Where does confidently come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb confidere, meaning 'to have full trust', formed from the intensive prefix con- and the verb fidere 'to trust'. The same fidere root gives English a whole family of trust words, including 'fidelity', 'confide', and the dog name 'Fido', which literally means 'I trust'. The adjective 'confident' arrived in English in the late sixteenth century through French and directly from Latin confidens, the present participle meaning 'trusting fully'. The adverb 'confidently' was then built in the ordinary English way by adding the suffix -ly to that adjective. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the '-dent-' is pronounced as a weak schwa, so writers must remember it is spelled with an 'e', matching 'confident', rather than the 'a' that the ear might suggest.

How the word is built

• con- (with, intensive)
• fid (trust, from Latin fidere)
• -ent (adjective ending)
• -ly (adverb ending)