Exactly

How to spell exactly

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exactly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exactly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is precisely accurate, with nothing added or left out.

Exactly in a sentence

• The invoice showed exactly what we owed, down to the penny.

• The train arrived at exactly nine o'clock.

Where does exactly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb exigere, meaning 'to drive out', 'to demand', or 'to weigh precisely', formed from ex 'out' and agere 'to drive or do'. Its past participle exactus came to mean 'precise' or 'measured out', since something exacted had been carefully demanded down to the last detail. English adopted 'exact' as an adjective in the late 1400s and early 1500s, and soon built the adverb 'exactly' with the everyday -ly ending. The same agere root sits inside a whole family of common words such as 'act', 'agent', and 'agile', all carrying the sense of doing or driving. The spelling trap is invisible to the ear: the medial 'ct' is pronounced as a single crisp sound, so writers can forget the silent 'c' lurking between the 'a' and the 't'.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• act (from agere: to do, drive)
• -ly (adverb suffix)