Dearly

How to spell dearly

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dearly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dearly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that shows deep love or fondness.
2. adverbAt a great cost, whether in money or in serious consequences.

Dearly in a sentence

• The family loved their grandmother dearly and visited her every week.

• The company paid dearly for ignoring its customers' complaints.

• She held the old photographs dearly because they reminded her of home.

• Investors learned dearly that the scheme had been a fraud.

Where does dearly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English adjective deore, which meant both 'beloved' and 'expensive', two ideas that English has kept tangled together ever since: something you treasure and something that costs a great deal were felt to be closely related. By adding the common adverb-forming ending -lice, Old English produced deorlice, the direct ancestor of modern dearly. Over the centuries the spelling settled with the 'ear' vowel that we still see in 'dear', 'hear' and 'near', even though the sound is simply a long ee. The split into 'fondly' and 'at great cost' was already present in the earliest records and survives today in phrases like 'dearly loved' and 'paid dearly'. Because the base word 'dear' is so familiar, the spelling trap here is purely the 'ear' cluster, easily slipped to 'deerly' or 'dearley'.

How the word is built

• dear (Old English deore: beloved, precious, costly)
• -ly (adverb suffix)