Repeatedly

How to spell repeatedly

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce repeatedly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does repeatedly mean?

1. adverbMany times in succession; again and again.

Repeatedly in a sentence

• The customer repeatedly asked for a refund before anyone responded.

• He was repeatedly late for the morning meeting.

Where does repeatedly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb repetere, which meant 'to seek again', 'to return to', or 'to do over', built from the prefix re- 'again' and petere 'to seek, aim at, or strive after'. The very same petere root sits inside familiar words such as 'petition', 'appetite', and 'compete', all of which carry a sense of reaching or striving toward something. English absorbed the verb 'repeat' in the late fourteenth century by way of the Old French repeter, keeping the meaning of doing or saying something over again. The adverb 'repeatedly' was then assembled on home soil by adding the English past participle ending -ed and the adverb-forming -ly to give 'again and again'. Because the -ed quietly disappears in speech (we say it almost as 'repeetidly'), writers sometimes drop that hidden letter cluster, even though the spelling faithfully preserves both the -ed of 'repeated' and the -ly of the adverb.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• peat (from Latin petere: to seek, aim at)
• -ed (past participle)
• -ly (adverb suffix)