-ly
/li/
The verdict
“-ly” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a suffix. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 3
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Indique la plupart des adverbes en anglais. Équivalent de -ment en français.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ly · -ly · French
-ly · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "-" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | -ly |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Suffix |
| IPA | /li/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « -ly » en français
Rare enough to double-check
-ly is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as asuffix, transcribed /li/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for -ly, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is -ly, spelled --L-Y.
Definition
- 1Indique la plupart des adverbes en anglais. Équivalent de -ment en français.
- 2Indique les adjectifs en anglais. Ce sens conserve la signification de like : womanly = like a woman ; manly = like a man ; neighborly = like a (good) neighbor ; scholarly = like a (good) scholar ; friendly = like a (good) friend ; brotherly = like a (good) brother ; gentlemanly, sisterly, fatherly, motherly, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, costly, lively, miserly, orderly, sickly, heavenly, lovely, stately, northerly, etc.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how -ly appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Strong « fort » - strongly « fortement »
King « roi » - kingly « en rapport avec les rois »
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.