knowingly

English

Etymology

From Middle English knawyngly, knowyngly. By surface analysis, knowing +‎ -ly.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Adverb

knowingly (comparative more knowingly, superlative most knowingly)

  1. In the manner of one who knows.
    She smiled knowingly, but kept the secret.
    • 1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 121:
      He pursed his lips knowingly and winked exaggeratedly.
  2. With knowledge of all relevant facts.
    Synonyms: awarely, consciously
    Antonyms: unknowingly, obliviously, unawarely; unconsciously, subconsciously
    She would never knowingly pour any pollutant down the drain.
    We keep our prices low and are never knowingly undersold.
    • 2021 March 17, Stephen Collinson, “New US intel report shows Russia, Trump and GOP acolytes have same goals”, in CNN‎[1], Atlanta, Ga.: Warner Bros. Discovery, archived from the original on 1 June 2026:
      The real bombshell it contains is not the confidence of the spy agencies that Russia hoped to subvert American democracy. It is that US intelligence experts effectively confirmed that for the second election in a row, Trump acolytes repeatedly used, knowingly or otherwise, misinformation produced by the spies of one of America’s most sworn foreign adversaries to try to win a US election.

Translations

This page is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.