willingly

[wil-ing-lee]

adverb

1. in a consenting and often cheerful way.

   They volunteer for duty on faraway battlefields, willingly putting their lives on the line to fight and possibly die for their country.

Other Word Forms

• overwillingly adverb
• prewillingly adverb
• quasi-willingly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of willingly¹

First recorded before 900; equivalent to willing ( def. ) + -ly ( def. )

Example Sentences

One of the employees willingly surrendered to the suspects when they heard them identify themselves as immigration agents, the FBI said.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

It raises questions of why the agents appeared to willingly let a suspect go, ultimately setting off a sequence of events that ended in a shooting that wounded Parias and a deputy marshal last week.

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Many people staffing the fraud factories say they were trafficked into the hubs, although analysts say workers also go willingly to secure attractive salary offers.

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It didn’t raise eyebrows when the Blazers willingly benched their best players for a night in the hopes of securing a higher draft pick, a common practice known as “tanking.”

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The multibillion-dollar scam industry has ballooned in Cambodia in recent years, with thousands involved -- some willingly and others forced by organised criminal groups, experts say.

Read more on Barron's

Related Words

• cheerfully www.thesaurus.com
• freely 
• readily 
• voluntarily