Inadvertently

How to spell inadvertently

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce inadvertently

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inadvertently mean?

1. adverbWithout intending to; by accident or oversight rather than on purpose.

Inadvertently in a sentence

• She inadvertently deleted the file while clearing out old folders.

• The report inadvertently included figures from the wrong quarter.

Where does inadvertently come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb advertere, which meant 'to turn toward' and was built from ad 'to' and vertere 'to turn'. From advertere came the idea of turning the mind toward something, that is, paying attention, which gave the Latin advertentia 'attention'. Adding the negative prefix in- 'not' produced the sense of failing to turn one's attention to a thing, hence acting without noticing. English picked up 'inadvertent' in the seventeenth century and quickly formed the adverb 'inadvertently' to describe something done unintentionally or by oversight. The same vertere root still turns up in a crowd of familiar relatives such as 'advertise', 'convert', 'reverse' and 'divert', and the buried 'vert' is the spelling clue worth holding onto, since the trap is the unstressed middle, ad-VERT-ent-ly, where writers drop letters or mishear the vowels.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• ad- (toward)
• vert (from Latin vertere: to turn)
• -ent (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)