Necessarily

How to spell necessarily

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce necessarily

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does necessarily mean?

1. adverbAs an inevitable result or by logical requirement; unavoidably.

Necessarily in a sentence

• A higher salary does not necessarily mean greater job satisfaction.

• The cheapest supplier is not necessarily the most reliable one.

Where does necessarily come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin necessarius, meaning 'unavoidable' or 'indispensable', which was built from necesse, 'needful' or 'inevitable'. That root is usually explained as ne- 'not' joined to cedere 'to yield or give way', so the literal idea is something that cannot be set aside or escaped. English borrowed the adjective 'necessary' through Old French in the 1300s, and the adverb 'necessarily' was formed in English by adding the familiar -ly ending. The same cedere root surfaces in a whole family of common words such as 'recede', 'concede' and 'proceed', all carrying the sense of yielding or moving. The spelling trap is the doubled middle: one 'c' but two 's' letters, followed by the soft -arily ending whose vowels blur into a schwa in speech, which is exactly why writers drop a letter or add a stray one.

How the word is built

• ne- (not)
• cess (from cedere: to yield, give way)
• -ary (adjective)
• -ily (adverb suffix)