Drastically

How to spell drastically

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce drastically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does drastically mean?

1. adverbTo a severe, extreme, or far-reaching degree.

Drastically in a sentence

• The company drastically cut its workforce after the merger.

• House prices have risen drastically over the past decade.

Where does drastically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek drastikos, which meant 'active' or 'effective', and which was built on the verb dran, meaning 'to do' or 'to act'. The sense, then, was originally about something that genuinely gets things done rather than something merely violent or extreme. English first adopted the adjective 'drastic' in the early 1700s, at first largely in medical writing to describe a strong purgative that acted powerfully on the body. From there the meaning broadened to anything forceful, severe, or far-reaching, and the adverb 'drastically' followed naturally by attaching the familiar -ally ending. The same Greek dran also gave us 'drama', literally 'a thing done' or 'an action performed on stage', so a play and a drastic decision are distant cousins. The spelling trap is the silent layering of -ic plus -al plus -ly, which produces the doubled 'l' even though only one 'l' is pronounced.

How the word is built

• drast- (from Greek drastikos: active, effective)
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)