This is part of the difference between series.
I recently encountered a Facebook comment that included the word extreamly, and it reminded me that I’ve seen this spelling before. This seemed like a blog post waiting to happen.
At this point of the blog post, you might be expecting me to say, “Actually, there is no difference; extreamly is just a misspelling of extremely.” Well, not so quick.
Extremely
Let’s start with defining extremely. We use extremely when we want to indicate a high degree of something.
- He skates extremely well.
- The side roads are extremely rough this summer.
- The dark side of the moon is extremely cold.
- They were extremely happy on their wedding day.
Extreamly
Extreamly, on the other hand, means, well, the same thing. It’s technically not a misspelling of extremely; it’s an archaic spelling of it.
For example, take a look at this page from A General Natural History, written by Thomas Osborne in 1748:
Or this page from The Voyage of François Legaut by Capt. Pasfield Oiver, written in 1697.
And if we look at the Google NGram viewer, we see that extreamly rose in popularity at the turn of the 18th century, then all but died off about halfway through the century.
Even though extreamly had widespread usage, it was never meant to be. It battled it out with extremely towards the end of the 17th century, but extremely outperformed it, maintaining its position as preference for over 250 years.
That being said, extreamly refuses to die. Even though, extremely has been far more popular for centuries, extreamly hangs on, determined to survive.
So, we can’t technically tell someone they’re misspelling extremely when they write extreamly. It isn’t a misspelling; it’s just an outdated one. I guess one could argue that it’s a wrong spelling because it’s obsolete or archaic. But that’s an argument for another day.
What words do you commonly confuse? Let me know in the comments below.
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