Romantically

How to spell romantically

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce romantically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does romantically mean?

1. adverbIn a manner connected with love or amorous feeling.
2. adverbIn a way that is idealistic, imaginative, or detached from practical reality.

Romantically in a sentence

• The couple were romantically involved for two years before they married.

• She romantically pictured life in the countryside, ignoring the hard daily work involved.

• He insisted they were just friends and had never been romantically linked.

• The brochure described the ruins rather romantically, glossing over how cold and damp they were.

Where does romantically come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin Romanicus, meaning 'in the Roman style' or 'in the Roman manner', which referred to the Latin-derived vernacular languages of medieval Europe. In Old French a story told in one of those everyday tongues, rather than in formal Latin, was called a roman, and because such tales were full of chivalry, adventure and love affairs, the word came to carry overtones of fancy and passion. English borrowed 'romance' for these narratives, and by the 1600s the adjective 'romantic' described anything dreamy, imaginative or far removed from plain reality. The adverb 'romantically' was then built by stacking the suffixes -ic, -al and -ly onto that root, which is exactly why it ends in the full -ically string rather than a simpler -icly. Remembering that the word grew from 'romantic' plus '-al' plus '-ly' explains the cluster of letters that trips up many writers.

How the word is built

• roman- (a tale in the vernacular, from Latin Romanicus 'in the Roman manner')
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)