Tremendously

How to spell tremendously

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce tremendously

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tremendously mean?

1. adverbTo an extremely great extent or degree; very much.

Tremendously in a sentence

• The new manager has been tremendously helpful during the merger.

• Property prices in that suburb have risen tremendously over the past decade.

Where does tremendously come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin tremendus, which literally meant 'to be trembled at' or 'fit to make one tremble'. That form was the gerundive of the verb tremere, meaning 'to tremble' or 'to shake with fear'. When the word entered English in the 1600s as 'tremendous', it carried this original sense of something so awe-inspiring or dreadful that it made you shiver. Over time the meaning softened from genuine terror into mere intensity, so that by the 1800s 'tremendous' simply meant 'very great' or 'enormous', and the adverb 'tremendously' came to mean 'to an extremely large degree'. The same tremere root sits inside the words 'tremble' and 'tremor', and remembering that family helps fix the unstressed middle 'e' that writers often blur.

How the word is built

• tremend- (from Latin tremendus: to be trembled at)
• -ous (full of, adjective)
• -ly (adverb)