Emotionally

How to spell emotionally

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce emotionally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emotionally mean?

1. adverbIn a way that relates to or is governed by feelings rather than reason.

Emotionally in a sentence

• The support group helped her feel less emotionally isolated after the move.

• He found the long custody dispute emotionally exhausting.

Where does emotionally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back through 'emotion' to the French word 'émotion', which described a stirring up or a public commotion before it settled into its modern sense of inner feeling. The French term grew from the verb 'émouvoir', meaning 'to move out' or 'to stir', and that verb rests on the Latin 'emovere', built from 'e-' meaning 'out' and 'movere' meaning 'to move'. The original idea was literally a moving or disturbance, so an emotion was once thought of as a state of being moved within. English adopted 'emotion' in the early 1600s, and over time speakers stacked the familiar endings '-al' and '-ly' on top to form 'emotionally'. The same 'movere' root powers a whole family of relatives, including 'motion', 'remove', and 'motive', and remembering that 'move' hides inside the middle of the word helps fix the troublesome string of unstressed syllables that follow it.

How the word is built

• e- (out, from Latin ex)
• mot (move, from movere)
• -ion (state/action noun)
• -al (relating to)
• -ly (adverb)