fearfully
fear·ful·ly/ˈfɪɹfəli/adverb
fearfully is an adverb meaning “In a fearful manner; characterized by fear” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-E-A-R-F-U-L-L-Y and has 3 syllables (fear·ful·ly), and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does fearfully mean?
adverb
- 1
In a fearful manner; characterized by fear.
I stepped fearfully into the pitch-dark cave.
- 2
UKdatedvery; very much.
He's a fearfully good striker.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce fearfully?
- US /ˈfɪɹfəli/
- UK /ˈfɪəfəli/
Fearfully has 3 syllables, split fear·ful·ly in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-fearfully.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of fearfully
- more fearfully comparative
- most fearfully superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fearfully?
Fearfully appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 57,423rd 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).
Where does fearfully come from?
From fearful + -ly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).