Episode 50: -ly (Adverbial Suffix)

Adverbs ending in the -ly suffix are all contractions hiding in plain sight. -ly is cognate with the word ‘like,’ and indeed, it literally means … ‘like.’ Sadly is literally sad-like. Madly is literally mad-like. Amazingly, both ‘like’ and ‘-ly’ derive from a root word meaning ‘body or corpse.’ Over the course of this episode, we try to make sense of this semantic evolution.