What does feelingly mean?
"Feelingly" is a rare adverb meaning with deep or acute feeling — keenly, sensitively, or so as to be strongly felt. Someone who speaks feelingly expresses themselves with visible emotion, while something felt feelingly registers sharply and personally. The word flourished in earlier centuries, particularly in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, where writers valued its capacity to intensify verbs such as "feel," "speak," and "know." Today it survives mainly in literary or self-consciously formal contexts, lending a passage a heightened, almost poetic tone that plainer adverbs like "deeply" cannot match. Its connotations are warm rather than neutral: it implies genuine emotional engagement, whether one's own suffering or sympathy for another. Though uncommon, it remains a legitimate and evocative word, useful when a writer wants to insist that an experience was not merely noticed but truly felt.
adverbWith deep or acute feeling; keenly, so as to be strongly felt. Also, sensitively or with sympathetic emotional awareness.
- With strong or deep feeling; keenly, so as to be acutely felt.
- Sensitively; with sympathetic awareness of others' emotions.
"He spoke feelingly about the friend he had lost."
"She thanked them feelingly for their support during the crisis."
"Gloucester, though blind, could still feel his losses feelingly."
A word for feeling things all the way down — beloved by early modern writers, now a rare literary gem.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of feelingly
"Feelingly" was formed in Middle or early Modern English from the noun "feeling" plus the adverbial suffix -ly. "Feeling" itself descends from the Old English verb "fēlan," meaning to touch or perceive by touch, a word of common Germanic origin. Cognates survive in modern German "fühlen" and Dutch "voelen," both carrying the same core sense of perceiving through emotion or touch.
Related word forms
How feelingly is actually used
Now rare and largely confined to literature or deliberately archaic prose. It carries an elevated, emotive register; ordinary modern usage would prefer 'deeply' or 'keenly'.
Easily confused with feelingly
Seemingly means apparently or according to appearances, while feelingly means with deep or keen feeling.