Deliberately

How to spell deliberately

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce deliberately

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deliberately mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is done on purpose and with full intention.

Deliberately in a sentence

• She deliberately left her phone at home to avoid distractions during the retreat.

• The contractor deliberately underbid the project to win the contract.

Where does deliberately come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb deliberare, meaning 'to weigh carefully' or 'to consider thoroughly'. It was built from the intensifying prefix de- and a root tied to libra, the Latin word for a pair of scales or a balance, the same object that names the zodiac sign and the old British pound symbol. The literal image is of someone weighing options on a balance before deciding, which is exactly how the modern sense of acting on purpose, after thought, developed. English took the adjective 'deliberate' from this Latin source in the fifteenth century and added the native adverb suffix -ly to form 'deliberately'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed 'er' and the second 'i' both reduce to a faint schwa in speech, so writers often drop or swap them, and the silent reminder is that 'liber' here means scales, not the Latin liber meaning 'free' or 'book'.

How the word is built

• de- (intensive)
• liber- (from libra: a balance or pair of scales)
• -ate (verb/adjective ending)
• -ly (adverb suffix)