Personally

How to spell personally

10 letters · 4 syllables

37 of the 518 people asked to spell personally in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is personaly. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

personaly personally

What people typed instead

• personaly14 people

How to pronounce personally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does personally mean?

1. adverbIn one's own view, or done by oneself rather than by someone else.

Personally in a sentence

• She personally preferred to handle the accounts herself.

• The manager dealt with the complaint personally rather than passing it on.

Where does personally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin persona, which originally meant the mask worn by an actor on stage and, by extension, the character or role being played. Over time persona came to mean a human being or individual, and from it Latin formed personalis, meaning 'belonging to a particular person'. English borrowed the adjective 'personal' through Old French during the 1300s, and the adverb 'personally' was built on it shortly afterwards by adding the native English ending -ly. The spelling trap lives at the join: 'personal' already ends in -al, so adding -ly produces the double l that writers often drop. Remembering the chain person plus -al plus -ly keeps both letters in place.

How the word is built

• person (from Latin persona: a person, originally a theatrical mask)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)

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Of the Spelling Garden players who got personally wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

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