surely
/ˈʃʊɹli/adverb
surely is spelled S-U-R-E-L-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is surley: about 270 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 3 in 10 of all searches for the word. Surely is an adverb meaning “Without fail”.
How many letters and syllables are in surely?
| Letters | 6: S-U-R-E-L-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 35 times per million words; the 2,725th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, surley, about 270 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell surely?
Surely is spelled S-U-R-E-L-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 3 in 10 of the searches for surely in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is surely?
Surely appears 35 times per million words in written English, the 2,725th 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).
How do you pronounce surely?
- /ˈʃɔːli/
- /ˈʃʊəli/
- US /ˈʃʊɹli/
Surely 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-surely.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with surely?
4 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as surely from its last stressed vowel (/ʊɹli/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of surely
- surelier comparative
- more surely comparative
- sureliest superlative
- most surely superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does surely mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adverb
- 1
Without fail.
slowly but surely
- 2
Certainly, undoubtedly.
Surely, you must be joking.
- 3
With confidence.
His feet were planted surely on the ground.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Surely in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sûrement , assurément |
| German | bestimmt, sicherlich |
| Portuguese | certamente, seguramente |
| Spanish | seguramente, deber/haber de, seguro/fijo que |
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 surely come from?
From Middle English surely; equivalent to sure + -ly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).