Respectively

How to spell respectively

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce respectively

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does respectively mean?

1. adverbSeparately and in the order already mentioned, matching each item to its counterpart.

Respectively in a sentence

• The gold and silver medals went to Spain and France respectively.

• The two managers earn ninety and seventy thousand pounds respectively.

Where does respectively come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb respicere, meaning 'to look back at' or 'to regard', formed from re- 'back' and specere 'to look'. Its past participle stem respect- gave Latin the noun respectus, a 'looking back' or act of consideration, and from this came the medieval Latin adjective respectivus, meaning 'relating to' or 'having reference to'. English took up 'respective' in the 1500s with the sense 'belonging to each one in particular', and the adverb 'respectively' soon followed to signal that a list of items lines up one-to-one with another list in the same order. The buried root specere is the very same one that powers 'spectacle', 'inspect' and 'spectator', all of which involve looking. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the -spect- is easy, but writers can drop or muddle the -ive- before the final -ly.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• spect (from specere: to look)
• -ive (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)