Genuinely

How to spell genuinely

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce genuinely

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does genuinely mean?

1. adverbIn a truly sincere or authentic way; really and not pretended.

Genuinely in a sentence

• She was genuinely surprised by the promotion she received.

• The manager seemed genuinely concerned about the staffing shortage.

Where does genuinely come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb descends from the Latin adjective genuinus, meaning 'natural', 'innate' or 'authentic', which English absorbed in the 1500s as 'genuine'. The Latin root is usually tied to gignere, 'to beget' or 'to bring forth', so something genuine was something that truly came from its claimed source rather than being faked. An older and rather charming theory instead links genuinus to genu, the Latin word for 'knee', recalling a Roman custom in which a father placed a newborn on his knee to publicly acknowledge it as truly his own. The adverb 'genuinely' was simply formed in English by adding the familiar '-ly' ending to 'genuine'. The spelling trap is the silent 'e' tucked inside the middle: writers who spell by ear often drop it and write 'genuinly', because the vowel is barely sounded before the '-ly'.

How the word is built

• genu- (from Latin genuinus: natural, innate)
• -ine (adjective ending)
• -ly (adverb suffix)