ultimately
Britishadverb
Explanation
Ultimately means "at the very end of the process." Your strategy of robbing banks with a water gun worked a few times, but ultimately it was unsuccessful. Use ultimately when you want to stress that there are many different elements of something, but in the end there's one clear conclusion. The city parks department might listen to everyone's ideas for what to do with that empty lot, but ultimately they'll do whatever they think will serve the city best. Ultimately comes from the Latin ultimāre, meaning, lying at the very end.
Vocabulary lists containing ultimately
Tuesdays with Morrie
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Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
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Obama, on the 50th anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday'
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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.
The money was ultimately sent to an entity Walter controlled, the people said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
Harry waged a years-long, ultimately unsuccessful legal battle with the government to reinstate his publicly funded security.
From Barron's ● Aug. 23, 2026
At the same time, they raise broader questions about how vision evolves, how tissues remain functional over extremely long periods and whether some of those protective mechanisms could ultimately be applied to humans.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 23, 2026
The public ultimately expects journalists, scholars and elected officials to behave ethically.
From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2026
The “action” of a gene is described in mechanistic terms: genes encode chemical messages to build proteins that ultimately enable form and function.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions 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.
