Slowly

How to spell slowly

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce slowly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does slowly mean?

1. adverbAt a low speed; taking a long time to move, happen, or develop.

Slowly in a sentence

• The old lift climbed slowly to the top floor.

• She read the contract slowly to catch every detail.

Where does slowly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the native Old English adjective slāw, meaning 'sluggish', 'dull', or 'inactive', a word shared with related Germanic languages such as Dutch sleeuw and Old Norse slær. The adverb form was made in the usual English way by adding the suffix -ly, itself descended from Old English -līce, which originally meant something like 'having the form or manner of'. So slowly literally describes acting in a slow manner. The base word kept its sense of low speed throughout its history, though it once carried a stronger flavour of mental dullness, surviving today in expressions like 'a slow learner'. The spelling is comfortably regular: take the adjective slow and simply append -ly, with no dropping of letters and no doubled consonant.

How the word is built

• slow (from Old English slāw: sluggish)
• -ly (adverb suffix)