Reportedly

How to spell reportedly

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce reportedly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reportedly mean?

1. adverbAccording to what has been said or claimed by others, though not necessarily confirmed.

Reportedly in a sentence

• The company is reportedly planning to close two of its regional offices.

• The minister reportedly refused to comment on the leaked memo.

Where does reportedly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The core of this word goes back to the Latin verb reportare, which combined the prefix re-, meaning 'back', with portare, meaning 'to carry', so the literal sense was 'to carry back'. What a messenger carried back was news, and so the word came to mean delivering an account of something one had seen or learned. English took it up through Old French reporter in the fourteenth century, and the noun and verb 'report' settled into the language for an official or spoken account of events. The adjective form 'reported', meaning 'stated by others', then gained the adverb ending -ly to produce 'reportedly', a journalistic word used when a claim is attributed to sources rather than confirmed. The same portare root quietly underlies a whole family of carrying words such as 'transport', 'export' and 'porter', which is a useful way to anchor the spelling of the middle 'port'.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• port (carry, from Latin portare)
• -ed (past participle)
• -ly (adverb suffix)