The
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...
''-ly'' in English is usually a contraction of ''-like'', similar to the
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
''-lice'' and
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
''-lich''. It is commonly added to an
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
to form an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
, but in some cases it is used to form an adjective, such as ''ugly'' or ''manly''. When "-ly" is used to form an adjective, it is attached to a noun instead of an adjective (i.e., ''friendly'', ''lovely''). The adjective to which the suffix is added may have been lost from the language, as in the case of ''early'', in which the Anglo-Saxon word ''aer'' only survives in the poetic usage ''ere''.
This morpheme tends to mean "to act in a way that is?".
Though the origin of the suffix is Germanic, it may now be added to adjectives of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
origin, as in ''publicly''.
[
When the suffix is added to a word ending in the letter ''y'', the ''y'' before the suffix is replaced with the letter ''i'', as in ''happily'' (from ''happy''). This does not always apply in the case of monosyllabic words; for example, ''shy'' becomes ''shyly'' (but ''dry'' can become ''dryly'' or ''drily'', and ''gay'' becomes ''gaily''). Other examples are ''heavily'' (from ''heavy''), ''luckily'' (from ''lucky''), ''temporarily'' (from ''temporary''), ''easily'' (from ''easy''), ''emptily'' (from ''empty''), and ''funnily'' (from ''funny'').
When the suffix is added to a word ending in double ''l'', only ''y'' is added with no additional ''l''; for example, ''full'' becomes ''fully''. Note also ''wholly'' (from ''whole''), which may be pronounced either with a single ''l'' sound (like ''holy'') or with a doubled (]geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
) ''l''.
When the suffix is added to an adjective ending in a vowel letter followed by the letter ''l'', it results in an adverb spelled with ''-lly,'' for example, the adverb ''centrally'' from the adjective ''central,'' but without a geminated l sound in pronunciation. Other examples are ''actually'', ''historically'', ''really'', ''carefully'', ''especially'', and ''usually''. When the suffix is added to a word ending in a consonant followed by ''le'' (pronounced as a syllabic ''l''), generally the mute ''e'' is dropped, the ''l'' loses its syllabic nature, and no additional ''l'' is added; this category is mostly composed of adverbs that end in ''-ably'' or ''-ibly'' (and correspond to adjectives ending in ''-able'' or ''-ible''), such as ''probably'', ''presumably'', ''visibly'', ''terribly'', ''horribly'' and ''possibly'', but it also includes other words such as ''nobly,'' ''feebly,'' ''simply'', ''doubly'', ''triply,'' ''quadriply'' and ''idly.'' However, there are a few words where this contraction is not always applied, such as ''brittlely.''
When ''-ly'' is added to an adjective ending ''-ic'', the adjective is usually first expanded by the addition of ''-al''. For example, there are adjectives ''historic'' and ''historical'', but the only adverb is ''historically''. Other examples are ''basically'', ''alphabetically'', ''scientifically'', ''chemically'', ''classically'', and ''astronomically''. There are a few exceptions such as ''publicly.''
Adjectives in ''-ly'' can form inflected comparative and superlative forms (such as ''friendlier, friendliest'', ''lovelier'', ''loveliest''), but most adverbs with this ending do not (a word such as ''sweetly'' uses the periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
forms ''more sweetly, most sweetly''). For more details see Adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...
and Comparison in the English grammar article.
The Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
n domain, .ly
.ly is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya.
Registration
A .ly registration is the process of registering a user domain name within the ccTLD for Libya. The .ly domain, introduced in 1997, was used for domain hack
A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, and , using the fictitious country-code domains ''.ds'' and ''.le'', suggest the words ''birds'' an ...
s for this suffix.
See also
* -ing
''-ing'' is a suffix used to make one of the inflected forms of English verbs. This verb form is used as a present participle, as a gerund, and sometimes as an independent noun or adjective. The suffix is also found in certain words like ''morn ...
– the suffix used to form gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...
s and present tense
The present tense ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
* -ed
Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed peri ...
* -logy
''-logy'' is a suffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted from Ancient Greek ending in ('). The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French '' -logie'', which was in turn inherited from the Latin ''-lo ...
* -ism
''-ism'' is a suffix in many English words, originally derived from the Ancient Greek suffix ('), and reaching English through the Latin , and the French . It means "taking side with" or "imitation of", and is often used to describe philo ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*{{citation , url=http://www.web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/why-english-adverbial-ly.pdf , title=Why English adverbial -ly is not inflectional , author=Arnold Zwicky
Arnold M. Zwicky (born September 6, 1940) is a perennial visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford University, and Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Ohio State University.
Early life and education
Zwicky was b ...
, year=1995
ly
English grammar