Momentarily

How to spell momentarily

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce momentarily

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does momentarily mean?

1. adverbFor a very short time; lasting only an instant.
2. adverbIn a moment; very soon (chiefly North American usage).

Momentarily in a sentence

• The screen flickered momentarily before the picture settled.

• The manager said she would be with the customer momentarily.

• She paused momentarily to gather her thoughts before continuing the report.

• The flight crew announced that the plane would begin boarding momentarily.

Where does momentarily come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin momentum, which literally meant 'a movement' or 'the moving force of a balance', and by extension the tiny instant in which a scale tips. The Latin form contracted from movimentum, built on the verb movere, meaning 'to move', the same root that gives English 'motion', 'motor', and 'remove'. By the 1400s English had taken 'moment' to mean a very short space of time, and the adjective 'momentary' (lasting only an instant) followed; adding the adverb suffix -ly produced 'momentarily' in the late 1600s. The original British sense kept close to the root idea of a fleeting instant, meaning 'for a brief moment', while American English later developed the additional sense 'in a moment, very soon'. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers must remember the -ary stem from 'momentary' before the -ly, giving the full -arily ending rather than a dropped syllable.

How the word is built

• moment (from Latin momentum: a moment, movement)
• -ary (adjective suffix: relating to)
• -ly (adverb suffix)