Doubtfully

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    In a doubtful manner, in context of doubt or ambiguity, questionably.

    "He looked at the mauve envelope doubtfully, and examined the postmark. "Where is Pudlington, James? and one might almost ask—why is Pudlington? No town has any right to such an offensive name.""

Adverb
  1. 1
    in a doubtful manner wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
agnosticallyaskancedubiouslyin suspenseirresolvedlysalt

Example

More examples

"He looked at the mauve envelope doubtfully, and examined the postmark. "Where is Pudlington, James? and one might almost ask—why is Pudlington? No town has any right to such an offensive name.""

Etymology

From Middle English dowtfully, doutefulli, equivalent to doubtful + -ly.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.