Knowingly

How to spell knowingly

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce knowingly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does knowingly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that shows full awareness of what one is doing; deliberately and on purpose.
2. adverbIn a way that suggests one shares a secret or private understanding.

Knowingly in a sentence

• She would never knowingly break the terms of the contract.

• She smiled knowingly when he mentioned the surprise party.

• The company was fined for knowingly selling faulty goods.

• The waiter nodded knowingly and brought the usual bottle.

Where does knowingly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This adverb is built on the native English verb 'know', which descends from Old English cnawan, meaning 'to recognise, to perceive, to be acquainted with'. That verb belongs to a wide Germanic and Indo-European family and shares an ancient root with Latin (g)noscere 'to come to know' and Greek gignoskein, the source of words like 'diagnosis' and 'cognition'; the silent k at the front of 'know' was actually pronounced in early English and only fell silent around the seventeenth century, leaving the spelling trap we still wrestle with. The participle 'knowing' was formed in the usual way, and the adverb-forming suffix '-ly', from Old English -lice meaning 'in the manner of', was added on top to give 'knowingly'. It has been used since the late Middle Ages to mean 'with full awareness' and, by extension, 'deliberately'. Because the silent k and the -wing- cluster sit in front of a tidy -ly ending, writers sometimes drop a letter, which is the main reason the word is worth practising.

How the word is built

• know (Old English cnawan: to recognise, perceive)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)