Suspiciously

How to spell suspiciously

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce suspiciously

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does suspiciously mean?

1. adverbIn a manner that arouses or suggests distrust, doubt, or the sense that something is wrong.

Suspiciously in a sentence

• The auditor flagged several payments that looked suspiciously similar in amount.

• He had been acting suspiciously all week, checking the door and lowering his voice.

Where does suspiciously come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb traces back to the Latin verb suspicere, meaning literally 'to look up at' or 'to look at from below', formed from sub 'up from under' and specere 'to look or watch'. From that physical sense of glancing upward came the figurative idea of regarding something with mistrust, as if eyeing it warily from a hidden vantage point. Latin produced the noun suspicio for distrust, which passed through Old French as suspecioun before settling into Middle English around the 1300s. The adjective suspicious followed, and English later added the native adverb ending -ly to build suspiciously. The same specere root that means 'to look' still hides inside familiar relatives like inspect, spectator and conspicuous, and remembering that buried 'spic' helps explain why the word is spelled with a c rather than the s sound it produces.

How the word is built

• sus- (from sub-, up from below)
• spic (from specere: to look)
• -ious (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)