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Allin

unexpectedly

adverbattested in dialogue

  • United States//ʌnɪkˈspɛktɪdli//

In an unexpected manner.

adverb

  1. 1

    In an unexpected manner.

    Near-synonyms: against expectations, against all odds, surprisingly

    […] she was startled by unexpectedly meeting her husband, who was coming to seek her.

    Other evidence of former ownerships such as notice-boards, number plates, and makers' plates, are often discovered unexpectedly.

    The maw-worm could emerge unexpectedly from any orifice, including, most alarmingly, the corner of people's eyes.

Etymology

From unexpected + -ly or un- + expectedly.

Forms

comparative
more unexpectedly
superlative
most unexpectedly
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).