![]() ![]() ![]() So where’s the controversy? Well, the English language is a living language, which means that it’s constantly evolving. In both cases, JD’s action is undertaken in a hopeful manner. ![]() “It doesn’t look like snow today,” JD said hopefully, peering up at the sky. Because adverbs generally modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs in a sentence, we could also use it to modify the way he’s speaking: Hopefully is an adverb, and it’s modifying the way that JD is looking up at the sky. “It doesn’t look like snow today,” JD said, peering up at the sky hopefully. For a long, long time (read: centuries), there was only one acceptable meaning for the word hopefully-“in a hopeful manner.” Perhaps the most-touted example of this usage is in Robert Louis Stevenson’s essay “El Dorado,” where he says “Little do ye know your own blessedness for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.” The usage here gives us the sense that hope or anticipation of an event is better than the reality it is better to travel in a hopeful manner than it is to reach one’s destination. Yes, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding the word hopefully and how it’s used in speaking and writing. We’ve been asked “what is the correct way to use the word ‘hopefully’?” Let’s take a look at this historically controversial issue with some help from the Magnificent Seven. ![]()
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