Fondly

How to spell fondly

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fondly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fondly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that shows tender affection, warmth, or loving memory.

Fondly in a sentence

• She spoke fondly of her first job and the colleagues she trained with.

• He still remembers that seaside holiday fondly, years after the trip.

Where does fondly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Fondly is built on the adjective 'fond' plus the everyday adverb-forming ending '-ly'. The surprising part is the original meaning: in Middle English 'fond' was 'fonned', the past participle of the verb 'fonnen', which meant 'to be foolish' or 'to act like a simpleton', and it derived from 'fon', a noun for a fool. So to be fond of something first carried the idea of being foolishly devoted to it, and only later did the harsher edge fall away to leave the warm sense of tender affection we use today. By the time the word settled into modern English in the 1500s and 1600s, 'fondly' had two lives running side by side: 'in a foolish manner' and 'in a loving manner', and it is the loving sense that survives in normal use. The spelling is mercifully regular, since 'fond' simply takes '-ly' with no change, which is the main thing to fix in memory.

How the word is built

• fond (affectionate, originally foolish)
• -ly (adverb suffix)