correctly

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English correct

Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der.

Proto-Germanic *līkąder.

Proto-Germanic *-līkaz

Proto-Germanic *-ê

Proto-Germanic *-līkê

Proto-West Germanic *-līkē

Old English -līċe

Middle English -ly

English -ly

English correctly

From correct + -ly.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /kəˈɹɛk(t).li/

• Audio (Mid-Atlantic US):

  (file)

• (Australia, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /kəˈɹek(t).li/
• Hyphenation: cor‧rect‧ly

Adverb

correctly (comparative more correctly, superlative most correctly)

1. In a correct manner.

   Synonyms: accurately, exactly, precisely; see also Thesaurus:exactly

   Synonyms: decently, morally, rightly; see also Thesaurus:virtuously

   Antonym: incorrectly

   Most people couldn't pronounce Daragh's name correctly, so he went by the name of "Dave" instead.

   • 2024 May 30, Aimee Ortiz and Alexandra E. Petri, “From 74th Place to Spelling Champion: One Boy’s Journey to Win the Scripps Bee”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 3 September 2025:

     Bruhat rattled off a head-spinning 29 correctly spelled words in 90 seconds, including heautophany, nachschläge and puszta.

Related terms

• politically correctly

Translations

in a correct manner

• Assamese: ভালকৈ (bhalkoi)
• Bulgarian: вярно (bg) (vjarno), правилно (bg) (pravilno)
• Burmese: မှန်မှန် (hmanhman)
• Catalan: correctament (ca)
• Czech: správně (cs)
• Dutch: correct (nl), juist (nl), goed (nl)
• Esperanto: korekte
• Finnish: oikein (fi), korrektisti (fi)
• French: correctement (fr)
• Galician: correctamente (gl)
• Gothic: 𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌷𐍄𐌰𐌱𐌰 (raihtaba)
• Greek:

  Ancient Greek: ὀρθῶς (orthôs), προσηκόντως (prosēkóntōs)

• Ingrian: vernoist
• Italian: correttamente (it)
• Korean: 정확(正確)히 (ko) (jeonghwakhi)
• Latin: emendate
• Occitan: corrèctament
• Persian: تعریب (fa) (ta'rêb), درست (fa) (dorost)
• Polish: poprawnie (pl), prawidłowo (pl), właściwie (pl)
• Portuguese: corretamente (pt)
• Romanian: corect (ro), în mod corect
• Russian: пра́вильно (ru) (právilʹno)
• Sanskrit: ऋजु (sa) (ṛju)
• Serbo-Croatian: tačno (sh), тачно
• Slovak: správne
• Slovene: pravílno
• Spanish: correctamente (es)
• Swedish: korrekt (sv), rätt (sv), riktigt (sv)