Secondly

How to spell secondly

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce secondly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does secondly mean?

1. adverbUsed to introduce the second point, reason, or item in a sequence.

Secondly in a sentence

• The report listed the costs first and secondly the timeline.

• Secondly, the committee considered the budget for the new office.

Where does secondly come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin secundus, meaning 'following' or 'next', which itself came from the verb sequi, 'to follow'. This is the same root that gives us 'sequence' and 'sequel', words that all share the idea of one thing coming after another. English took 'second' through Old French during the 1200s, first as the ordinal numeral meaning the one that follows the first. The adverb 'secondly' was built later within English by adding the native suffix '-ly' to mark the second point in a list or argument. Because the base is simply 'second' plus '-ly', the spelling keeps both the 'd' and the doubled meeting of 'd' and 'l', which is the small trap writers sometimes stumble over.

How the word is built

• second (from Latin secundus: following)
• -ly (adverb suffix)