Exceedingly

How to spell exceedingly

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exceedingly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exceedingly mean?

1. adverbTo a very great degree; extremely.

Exceedingly in a sentence

• The new contract terms were exceedingly generous compared with last year.

• She found the train timetable exceedingly confusing on her first commute.

Where does exceedingly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb is built on the verb 'exceed', which English took from the Old French exceder in the 1300s, itself from the Latin excedere meaning 'to go out, go beyond, or surpass'. That Latin verb joins ex, meaning 'out' or 'beyond', to cedere, meaning 'to go' or 'to yield', the same root that gives us 'proceed', 'recede', and 'concede'. By adding the adverb-forming suffix -ly to the present participle 'exceeding', writers from the late medieval period onward produced a word meaning 'in a way that goes beyond the ordinary', that is, extremely or very greatly. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the Latin cedere supplies a double 'e' (-ceed), unlike the single 'e' of 'recede', and the silent reshuffle of sounds makes the doubled vowel easy to drop. Remembering that 'exceed' literally means to 'go beyond' helps fix both the e-e and the c rather than an s.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, beyond)
• ceed (from Latin cedere: to go)
• -ing (present participle)
• -ly (adverb suffix)