Skip to content
OneKitly

awfully

adverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɔː.fʊ.li//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɔː.fə.li//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɔː.fli//
  • United States//ˈɔ.f(ə.)li//
  • //ˈɑ.f(ə.)li//

Badly, terribly.

adverb

  1. 1

    Badly, terribly.

    She led after the swimming and cycling, but ran awfully and came in fourth.

  2. 2

    Very; exceedingly; extremely; excessively.

    It was wondrous. 'I'm awfully glad I came now,' his thought ran; 'I'm managing it rather well.'

    It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here / And I’m most obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here

  3. 3

    archaicIn a manner inspiring awe.

  4. 4

    archaicReverently.

  5. 5

    obsoleteFearfully.

    I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there.

Etymology

Etymology tree English awful Middle English -ly English -ly English awfully From awful + -ly.

Forms

comparative
more awfully
superlative
most awfully
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).