Perfectly

How to spell perfectly

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce perfectly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does perfectly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is complete, exact, or entirely correct.

Perfectly in a sentence

• The new tenant kept the flat perfectly tidy for the inspection.

• Her report explained the budget perfectly clearly to the board.

Where does perfectly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin perfectus, the past participle of perficere, which meant 'to finish' or 'to bring fully to completion'. That verb was built from per, meaning 'thoroughly' or 'completely', joined to facere, the everyday Latin verb 'to make' or 'to do'; so something perfectus was literally 'made all the way through'. English took perfect through Old French parfit in the 1200s, and over time the spelling was reshaped back toward its Latin source, restoring the c that the French form had lost. The adverb perfectly was then formed inside English by simply adding the native -ly ending. The same facere root sits inside a huge family of English words such as 'manufacture', 'defect', and 'affect', and recognising that fect comes from 'make' helps explain why the word is spelled with a c rather than the s-sound some speakers expect.

How the word is built

• per- (thoroughly, completely)
• fect (from facere: to make, to do)
• -ly (adverb suffix)