perfectly

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From perfect +‎ -ly.

Pronunciation

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Adverb

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perfectly (comparative more perfectly, superlative most perfectly)

  1. With perfection.
    They completed the first series perfectly.
  2. Wholly, completely, totally.
    Their performance was perfectly fine.
    Skydiving is the act jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
    • 1687, John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, page 6:
      The Gentiles would not perfectly relinquish all their Idols; so, they were persuaded to turne the Image of Jupiter with his thunderbolt to Christus crucifixus, and Venus and Cupid to the Madonna and her Babe.
    • 1899, Knut Hamsun, “Part III”, in George Egerton [pseudonym; Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright], transl., Hunger [], London: Leonard Smithers and Co [], →OCLC, page 168:
      I was perfectly stunned. I sat and moistened my lips a little, but otherwise made no effort to do anything: my chest was in a pitiful state.
    • 2011 November 12, “International friendly: England 1 – 0 Spain”, in BBC Sport[1]:
      James Milner's angled free-kick was headed on to the post by the tireless [Darren] Bent and [Frank] Lampard the opportunist was perfectly placed to stoop and head in from virtually on the goal-line.
    • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 4:
      The route taken does not have to be a perfectly straight line, just so long as it is linear and is followed consistently for each transect taken.

Derived terms

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Collocations

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Some adjectives commonly collocating with perfectly:

  • perfectly willing
  • perfectly safe
  • perfectly well
  • perfectly healthy
  • perfectly obvious
  • perfectly able
  • perfectly capable
  • perfectly clear
  • perfectly normal
  • perfectly understandable

Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Hall, Joseph Sargent (1942 March 2) “1. The Vowel Sounds of Stressed Syllables”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § 12, page 42.