Easily

How to spell easily

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce easily

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does easily mean?

1. adverbWithout difficulty or effort; readily.

Easily in a sentence

• The new software can easily handle a thousand users at once.

• She finished the report easily before the deadline.

Where does easily come from?

Language of origin: French

This adverb is built straightforwardly on the adjective 'easy', with the ending -y softened to -ily as English regularly does (happy becomes happily, busy becomes busily). 'Easy' itself came into English in the early 1200s from Old French 'aisie', the past participle of 'aisier', meaning 'to put at ease' or 'to make comfortable', which traces back to the noun 'aise', meaning comfort, opportunity, or elbow room. The deeper origin of 'aise' is debated, but it is often linked to the Latin 'adjacens', meaning 'lying nearby', the same source that gives us 'adjacent'. Over time 'easy' shifted from describing physical comfort to describing anything done without effort, and the adverb 'easily' simply carries that effortlessness into the manner of an action. The spelling trap is the swap from -y to -i before -ly, since writers sometimes slip and write 'easely' or keep the y as in 'easyly'.

How the word is built

• eas- (from ease: comfort, lack of difficulty)
• -ily (adverb suffix, replacing the -y of 'easy')