Respectfully or respectively?
respectfully is an adverb meaning “In a respectful manner”; respectively is an adverb meaning “In a relative manner; often used when comparing array lists, where the term…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) respectively is about 9.5 times as common as respectfully.
What is the difference between respectfully and respectively?
| respectfully | respectively | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adverb | adverb |
| Meaning | In a respectful manner | In a relative manner; often used when comparing array lists, where the term denotes that the items in the lists correspond to each other in the order they are… |
| Example | none recorded | Serena Williams and Roger Federer won the women's and men's singles titles, respectively, at the 2010 Australian Open |
| Pronunciation | /ɹɪˈspɛkt.fə.li/ | /ɹɪˈspɛktɪvli/ |
| In writing | 3.0 times per million words | 28 times per million words |
Sources: respectfully and respectively in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of respectfully and respectively
respectfully
- 1
In a respectful manner
respectively
- 1
In a relative manner; often used when comparing array lists, where the term denotes that the items in the lists correspond to each other in the order they are given
Serena Williams and Roger Federer won the women's and men's singles titles, respectively, at the 2010 Australian Open
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, respectfully or respectively?
respectfully appears 3.0 times per million words; respectively 28 times per million words.
respectfully 3.0 times per million wordsrespectively 28 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search respectfully vs respectively?
“respectfully vs respectively” is searched about 590 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“respectively vs respectfully”, “respectfully or respectively”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.