Nationally

How to spell nationally

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce nationally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nationally mean?

1. adverbAcross or throughout an entire country, rather than locally or regionally.

Nationally in a sentence

• The new product launched nationally on the same day.

• Her research was recognised nationally within the medical community.

Where does nationally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun natio, which literally meant 'a being born' and by extension came to mean a race, breed, or people sharing a common birth; it was built on the verb nasci, 'to be born'. From natio came the adjective form, and English took 'nation' through Old French during the 1300s, originally describing a large group of people united by descent or territory. The adjective 'national' appeared later, in the 1500s and 1600s, as politics increasingly framed the state around the idea of a single people, and the adverb 'nationally' followed by simply stacking the familiar '-ly' ending on top. The same nasci root still shows up in relatives like 'native', 'nature', and 'innate', all carrying that core idea of birth or inborn origin. For spelling, the trap is the quiet stack of endings: a single 't', then '-al' and '-ly' with their unstressed vowels, giving the doubled 'l' that writers sometimes forget.

How the word is built

• nat- (from natio: a being born, a people)
• -ion (noun)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)