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PlainSpell

purely

/ˈpjʊɹli/adverb, adjective

purely is an adverb meaning “Wholly; really, completely” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-U-R-E-L-Y and has 2 syllables, and it appears 13 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does purely mean?

adverb

  1. 1

    USWholly; really, completely.

  2. 2

    Solely; exclusively; merely, simply.

  3. 3

    Chastely, innocently; in a sinless manner, without fault.

  4. 4

    archaicWithout physical adulterants; refinedly, with no admixture.

adjective

  1. 1

    Well, in good health.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce purely?

  • UK /ˈpjʊəli/
  • UK /ˈpjɔːli/
  • US /ˈpjʊɹli/

Purely has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-purely.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of purely

  • more purely comparative
  • most purely superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is purely?

Purely appears 13 times per million words in written English, the 6,047th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Purely in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense Translations:

LanguageWords
Spanishpuramente

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does purely come from?

From Middle English purely, equivalent to pure + -ly.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).