Intimately

How to spell intimately

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce intimately

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intimately mean?

1. adverbIn a close, private, or detailed way that reflects deep personal familiarity.

Intimately in a sentence

• She knew the city intimately after living there for twenty years.

• The two colleagues worked intimately on the report for months.

Where does intimately come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin intimus, a superlative meaning 'innermost' or 'deepest', itself built on the preposition intus, 'within'. From intimus came the verb intimare, 'to make known' or 'to announce', literally to bring something into the inner circle, and the related adjective described what was most private or closely held. English took 'intimate' as an adjective in the late sixteenth century, carrying the sense of close personal familiarity, and the adverb 'intimately' followed naturally by adding the regular -ly ending. The same innermost root surfaces in the verb 'intimate', meaning to hint or suggest quietly. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the -mate- portion is pronounced as a faint schwa, so writers are tempted to drop or alter the vowel, but it preserves the -ate ending of the adjective beneath it.

How the word is built

• intim- (from Latin intimus: innermost)
• -ate (adjective-forming)
• -ly (adverb suffix)