Ordinarily

How to spell ordinarily

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce ordinarily

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ordinarily mean?

1. adverbIn the usual or normal course of events; as a general rule.

Ordinarily in a sentence

• The office is ordinarily closed on public holidays.

• A journey that ordinarily takes an hour stretched to three in the storm.

Where does ordinarily come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin noun ordo, with the stem ordin-, which literally meant a row, a rank, or an orderly arrangement, as of threads in a loom or soldiers in a line. From it Latin formed the adjective ordinarius, meaning 'belonging to the usual order' or 'regular', describing things that followed the customary arrangement rather than anything exceptional. English took 'ordinary' through Old French in the late Middle Ages, and by the sixteenth century writers added the native adverb suffix -ly to produce 'ordinarily', meaning 'in the usual way'. The same ordo root still powers a large family of English words such as order, ordain, coordinate, and subordinate, all of which carry the underlying idea of arranging things in their proper place. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed run of vowels in 'ordin-AH-ril-y' hides a faint schwa, and the doubled-up -arily ending tempts writers to drop a syllable or swap the vowels.

How the word is built

• ordin- (from Latin ordo, ordin-: order, row, arrangement)
• -ary (relating to)
• -ly (adverb suffix)