Freshly

How to spell freshly

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce freshly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does freshly mean?

1. adverbNewly or recently, especially in a way that emphasises something has just been done or made.

Freshly in a sentence

• The café served freshly ground coffee every morning.

• She walked across the freshly mown lawn in bare feet.

Where does freshly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word fresh comes from Old English fersc, which originally described water that was unsalted rather than food that was new, sitting alongside related Germanic forms such as Old High German frisc and Dutch vers. The sense broadened over the medieval period to mean new, recent, or not stale, helped by the parallel Old French freis and fresche, which themselves had been borrowed from the same Germanic stock. The adverb freshly was built straightforwardly in English by adding the productive suffix -ly, meaning in a manner that is, to the adjective. Because both the adjective and the suffix are everyday English elements, the spelling is regular and the only thing to watch is keeping the -shly cluster intact. Today it most often pairs with a past participle to stress that something has just been done, as in freshly baked or freshly painted.

How the word is built

• fresh (newly made, not stale)
• -ly (adverb suffix)