exceedingly
/ɪkˈsiːdɪŋli/adverb
To a very great or unusually high degree
From Latin ex- (out of) + Latin cēdere (to go).
Lineage
ex-
cēdere
-ing
-ly
The story
Latin speakers built excedere from ex-, “out,” and cēdere, “to go”: literally, to go beyond the boundary. That same cēdere is hiding in cede, recede, concede, and secede, so exceedingly belongs to a surprisingly large family of words about movement and yielding. English then stacked suffixes onto the idea: exceed became exceeding, and exceeding became exceedingly, as if the word kept adding a little more height to an already rising scale. The final -ly is related to the old Germanic word for “form” or “appearance,” the same family behind like—so exceedingly originally carries the faint idea of doing something “in an exceeding manner.” When you say “exceedingly difficult,” imagine a Latin traveler stepping past a marked boundary, then English attaching two grammatical signposts to make sure everyone knows just how far beyond it he went.
Modern usage
An emphatic synonym for very, incredibly, or greatly
- Heard in
- informal online writing
- See
- Urban Dictionary entry describing exceedingly as another way of saying very, incredibly, or greatly
Words from the same roots
Sources
- Etymonline-ly
- Urban Dictionaryexceedingly
- Wiktionaryexceedingly, exceeding