emphatically
Britishadverb
-
with emphasis or force
-
definitely or unquestionably
Explanation
When you say something emphatically, you say it with great emphasis and force, like when you emphatically denied that you took the last cookie. Emphatically, pronounced "em-FAT-ick-lee," shares the same origin as emphasize, which means "to stress or put particular importance on something." When you say or do something emphatically, you really mean it. For example, if you emphatically say "no" when someone asks you on a date, that person isn't likely to ask you — or even look in your direction — again.
Vocabulary lists containing emphatically
A Christmas Carol
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The Giver
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Wonder
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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.
Watching the vehicles stream past her, 73-year-old Imm Khaldoun told me emphatically that, no matter what happened, she would always return to her land.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
This is an emphatically reptilian portrayal of a TV personality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
The $18.49 Bio Orto remains, emphatically, an $18.49 jar of pasta sauce.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2026
Chen said the computing costs ran "emphatically in the millions of dollars," with Bubeck adding this was roughly 1,000 times what the company spent on earlier mathematical results.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
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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.
