Passionately

How to spell passionately

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce passionately

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does passionately mean?

1. adverbIn a way that shows strong, intense emotion or enthusiasm.

Passionately in a sentence

• She spoke passionately about the need for better funding.

• The volunteers care passionately about protecting the river.

Where does passionately come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb pati, meaning 'to suffer' or 'to endure', whose noun form passio described suffering, especially intense physical or emotional suffering. In medieval Church Latin passio came to name the suffering of Christ, the sense preserved in 'the Passion'. As the word travelled through Old French into English in the 1300s, the meaning broadened from suffering to any powerful, overwhelming feeling, whether anger, love, or zeal. The adjective 'passionate' was formed by adding the Latin-derived ending -ate, and the adverb 'passionately' simply attached the native -ly suffix. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers hear a single soft sound but must keep the double 's' of passion and the silent, almost swallowed 'ate' before the 'ly'.

How the word is built

• passion (from Latin passio: suffering, strong feeling)
• -ate (adjective-forming)
• -ly (adverb-forming)