Exclusively

How to spell exclusively

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exclusively

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exclusively mean?

1. adverbIn a way that excludes everything or everyone else; solely or only.

Exclusively in a sentence

• The lounge is reserved exclusively for first-class passengers.

• She now works exclusively from her home office.

Where does exclusively come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb claudere, which literally meant 'to shut' or 'to close'. Adding the prefix ex-, meaning 'out', produced excludere, 'to shut out' or 'to keep out', and its past participle stem gave exclusus. From that came the medieval Latin exclusivus, describing something that shuts others out, which passed into English through French in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The adjective exclusive then gained the adverb ending -ly to mean 'in a way that excludes all others'. The same claudere root quietly hides inside a whole family of English words, including 'include', 'conclude', 'recluse' and 'close', and remembering that shared 'shut' sense helps explain the -clus- spelling in the middle rather than a tempting -clos-.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• clud/clus (from claudere: to shut)
• -ive (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)