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Allin

practically

adverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈpɹæk.tɪ.k(ə.)li//

In practice; in effect or in actuality, though possibly not officially, technically, or legally.

adverb

  1. 1

    In practice; in effect or in actuality, though possibly not officially, technically, or legally.

    Stalin was not technically or legally the head of state but was practically so.

    It is true that the Articles of the [Argentine] Constitution promise fair conditions under which to live; but, unfortunately, the self-same Constitution, in the hands of unscrupulous administrators, becomes so elastic as to be practically a dead letter.

  2. 2

    Almost completely; almost entirely.

    Near-synonyms: effectively, nearly, virtually

    He was practically uneducated, barely able to read and write a simple sentence.

    If the ranchero had practically all the water near him, he had also practically all the cattle, […]

    The turnip is one of the lordliest vegetables in the world; its broth is practically a soup in itself.

  3. 3

    With respect to practices or a practice.

    He wasn't very good with words or numbers; he was more of a practically minded person

    He was practically educated and lacked theoretical depth.

  4. 4

    In a way that is practical: feasibly; unchallengingly.

    practically achievable

Etymology

Etymology tree English practical Middle English -ly English -ly English practically From practical + -ly.

Forms

comparative
more practically
superlative
most practically
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).