Naturally

How to spell naturally

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce naturally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does naturally mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is to be expected; as a natural or logical result.
2. adverbIn a manner that is relaxed, instinctive, or not forced.

Naturally in a sentence

• After working through the night, she was naturally exhausted by morning.

• The experienced presenter spoke naturally in front of the camera.

• The more he practised, the more confident he naturally became.

• Good manners came naturally to her after years of practice.

Where does naturally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin natura, meaning 'birth' or 'the inborn quality of a thing', which itself grew from natus, the past participle of nasci, 'to be born'. From natura, Latin built the adjective naturalis, meaning 'belonging to nature or by birth', and English took this in through Old French as 'natural' during the 1300s. The adverb 'naturally' was then formed inside English by attaching the native -ly ending to that adjective, so the long spelling stacks three pieces in a row. The same nasci root sits behind a whole family of relatives such as 'native', 'nation', and 'innate', all of which carry a faint sense of being born into something. For the speller, the trap is the unstressed middle: the word is built on natural plus -ly, so it keeps the full -al before -ly, giving the double-l 'naturally' rather than the tempting but wrong 'naturaly'.

How the word is built

• natur- (from natura: nature, the inborn character of things)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)