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OneKitly

supposedly

adverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//səˈpəʊ̯.zɪd.li//
  • United States//səˈpoʊ̯.zɪd.li//

As a matter of supposition; in the beliefs or according to the claims of some people.

adverb

  1. 1

    As a matter of supposition; in the beliefs or according to the claims of some people.

    Near-synonyms: supposably, reportedly, reputedly, purportedly, putatively, rumoredly, allegedly, ostensibly, possibly, probably, likely, plausibly

    People from other planets have supposedly visited Earth in flying saucers.

    According to your testimony, you were supposedly at home watching TV when the murder occurred.

    In these early days of silent pictures, the accent was chiefly on thrills and danger as provided by supposedly unstoppable locomotives with crooks or maniacs on the footplate.

  2. 2

    informalUsed in place of "supposed to be," often in informal or colloquial speech, as a mispronunciation.

    My parents told me I am supposedly in bed by 10 P.M.

Etymology

Etymology tree English supposed Middle English -ly English -ly English supposedly From supposed + -ly.

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).