Globally

How to spell globally

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce globally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does globally mean?

1. adverbIn a way that relates to or affects the whole world.

Globally in a sentence

• The company operates globally, with offices on every continent.

• Prices for the metal are set globally rather than by any single country.

Where does globally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin globus, which literally meant a round mass or ball, and is the same root that gives us 'globe' and 'global'. From globus, English formed the adjective 'global', originally meaning 'spherical' or 'shaped like a ball' before it broadened in the nineteenth century to mean 'relating to the whole world', a sense reinforced by the image of the Earth as a globe. The adverb 'globally' was then built straightforwardly by adding the English adverb suffix '-ly' to 'global'. The two-l spelling is the small trap: the base 'global' already ends in a single l, and adding '-ly' simply joins it to the l of the suffix, producing the doubled 'll' that writers sometimes shorten by mistake. The journey from Latin to English ran partly through French 'global', and the word in its modern worldwide sense is comparatively recent, gaining real currency only in the twentieth century alongside talk of a connected world economy.

How the word is built

• glob- (from globus: ball, sphere)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)