Incredibly

How to spell incredibly

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce incredibly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incredibly mean?

1. adverbTo an extreme or remarkable degree; so much as to seem hard to believe.

Incredibly in a sentence

• The new commute is incredibly slow during rush hour.

• She finished the marathon incredibly quickly for a first-timer.

Where does incredibly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb credere, meaning 'to believe' or 'to trust', which also gives us 'credit', 'credible', and 'creed'. Latin formed the adjective incredibilis by adding the negative prefix in- ('not') to credibilis ('believable'), so the literal sense was 'not to be believed'. English took 'incredible' through Old French and Latin in the 1400s, and the adverb 'incredibly' followed by adding the native English suffix -ly. Over time the meaning softened from 'literally unbelievable' to the everyday intensifier 'extremely' or 'remarkably', much as we use 'unbelievably' today. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed vowel is spelled with an 'i' (-ible), not 'a' (-able), because the Latin root carried that 'i', and the 'cred' stays single throughout.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• cred (believe, from credere)
• -ible (able to be)
• -ly (adverb-forming suffix)