Physically

How to spell physically

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce physically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does physically mean?

1. adverbIn a way that relates to the body or to material, tangible things rather than the mind or emotions.

Physically in a sentence

• The job is physically demanding and leaves him exhausted by evening.

• The two offices are not physically connected, so files move between them by courier.

Where does physically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adverb traces back to the ancient Greek word physis, meaning 'nature' or 'the natural world', and its related adjective physikos, meaning 'natural' or 'concerning nature'. Through Latin the form became physica, a name for the study of the natural world, which is the same root that gives us 'physics' and 'physician'. By the late Middle Ages English had borrowed 'physical' as an adjective, at first describing medicine and the body's natural workings, and only later settling on its broad modern sense of the body and material things as opposed to the mental or spiritual. The adverb 'physically' was then built in the ordinary English way by stacking the adjective ending -al onto the root and the adverb ending -ly on top of that. The spelling trap is exactly that pile-up: the silent 'a' of the -al survives in writing even though the voice glides straight from the 'k' sound to the 'lee', so the careful speller must remember to write 'physical' first and only then add -ly.

How the word is built

• physic- (from Greek physis: nature)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)