Skip to content
Allin

obviously

adverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɒ(b).vi.əs.li//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɒ(b).vɪəs.li//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɒ(b).vjəs.li//
  • United States//ˈɑ(b).vi(.)əs.li//
  • New Zealand//ˈɔ(b).vi.ɘs.li//

In an obvious or clearly apparent manner.

adverb

  1. 1

    In an obvious or clearly apparent manner.

    She was in floods of tears and obviously very upset.

    She'd obviously not gone to sleep yet: her eyes were bloodshot with sleepiness.

    The plane has obviously been delayed.

    It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.

  2. 2

    Used as a filler word, or to introduce information even when not obvious.

    You weren't to know, but I've spoken to, obviously, Jim about this, and ...

Etymology

Etymology tree English obvious Middle English -ly English -ly English obviously From obvious + -ly.

Forms

comparative
more obviously
superlative
most obviously
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).