Tragically

How to spell tragically

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tragically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tragically mean?

1. adverbIn a way that involves great suffering, loss, or untimely death.

Tragically in a sentence

• The play ends tragically with the hero losing everything he had built.

• The family was tragically unaware that the warning had been issued hours earlier.

Where does tragically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adverb traces back to the Greek word tragoidia, which named the solemn dramatic performances of ancient Athens and literally seems to combine tragos, meaning 'goat', with oide, meaning 'song', giving the curious sense of 'goat song'; scholars still debate whether this referred to a goat sacrificed at the festival or offered as a prize. The Greek term passed into Latin as tragicus and then into Old French as tragique before English adopted the adjective 'tragic' in the late 1500s. Writers built the fuller form 'tragical' and from it the adverb 'tragically', stacking the suffix -ly onto the adjective base. The spelling trap lives in that ending: the word is built on 'tragical', so it keeps the -al before -ly, giving the doubled-looking '-ically' rather than a simple '-icly'. The same pattern of an unspoken -al survives in 'basically', 'specifically', and 'dramatically', all of which share this hidden layer.

How the word is built

• trag- (from Greek tragoidia: tragedy)
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)