Individually

How to spell individually

12 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce individually

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does individually mean?

1. adverbSeparately, one at a time, or each on its own rather than together.

Individually in a sentence

• The chocolates were wrapped individually in gold foil.

• The manager met each new hire individually during the first week.

Where does individually come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin individuus, meaning 'undivided' or 'indivisible', built from the negative prefix in- ('not') and dividuus ('divisible'), which in turn came from dividere, 'to divide'. The literal idea was something that cannot be split into smaller parts, which is why a single, distinct person or thing came to be called an 'individual'. The word entered English in the late medieval period, first in scholarly and theological writing where it described a single, indivisible being, and only later softened into the familiar sense of one person considered apart from the group. The adverb individually adds the suffix -ly to mean 'one at a time' or 'separately, each on its own'. The spelling trap lives in the stack of suffixes: the -ual of individual keeps its u and a, and then -ly attaches to give the doubled effect of -ually, so writers must remember both the u-a vowels and the full ending rather than collapsing them.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• divid- (from Latin dividuus 'divisible')
• -ual (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)