solely
Americanadverb
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as the only one or ones.
solely responsible.
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exclusively or only.
plants found solely in the tropics.
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merely.
She wanted solely to get out of the house for a while.
adverb
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only; completely; entirely
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without another or others; singly; alone
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for one thing only
Etymology
Origin of solely
Explanation
Solely is another word for "only" or "entirely": Your new puppy is solely your responsibility — you have to feed it, walk it, and take care of it all by yourself. Solely comes from the Latin sola, the feminine form of "alone," and if you know other Romance languages, you'll recognize it in, for instance, Italian solo, or Spanish solamente and French seulement. In English, a solo is a song you sing alone.
Vocabulary lists containing solely
"Shooting an Elephant"
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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5.4: The Second Industrial Revolution (Sources 1–8)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Instead of relying solely on immune cells that may disappear relatively quickly, the progenitors could provide a continuing source of replacement cells from within the body.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026
This defeat was not solely on the batters, either.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
In 1982, Mr. Hall and co-author Frederic Mishkin helped pioneer the use of household-level consumption data, rather than solely aggregate data, to study what the Nobel committee calls “the rational-expectations, permanent-income hypothesis.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
People should rely solely on official statements from Russian health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, he insisted.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
The trail isn’t watched, solely because no one is stupid enough to risk sneaking out that way.
From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
