Ethically

How to spell ethically

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce ethically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ethically mean?

1. adverbIn a way that conforms to accepted principles of right and wrong conduct.

Ethically in a sentence

• The company promised to source all of its coffee ethically from certified farms.

• Journalists are trained to handle confidential sources ethically and with care.

Where does ethically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adverb traces back to the ancient Greek word ethos, which meant a person's character, habitual disposition, or the customs of a community. From ethos the Greeks formed the adjective ethikos, meaning 'relating to character or morals', and that passed into Latin as ethicus. English took up 'ethic' and 'ethical' from these classical sources in the late medieval and early modern period, partly by way of Old French, and the field of moral philosophy came to be called 'ethics'. The adverb 'ethically' was then built in the usual English way by stacking the suffixes: the adjective 'ethical' plus the adverb-forming '-ly'. The spelling trap lives in that middle stretch, since the word is really ethic + al + ly, which is why it ends in '-ically' with a full '-al-' rather than the shorter '-icly' that the spoken form seems to suggest.

How the word is built

• eth- (from Greek ethos: character, custom)
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb suffix)