Roughly

adv

adv ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adverb

1
In a rough manner; without kindness, softness, or gentleness.
"They treated the prisoners roughly [...] slashing pitilessly with their whips to drive them as wretched animals before them."
2
Unevenly or irregularly.
3
Without precision or exactness; imprecisely but close to in quantity or amount; approximately.
"Satanism can be divided, roughly, into two branches: the Luciferians and the Palladists."

Adverb

1
(of quantities) imprecise but fairly close to correct wordnet
2
with rough motion as over a rough surface wordnet
3
with roughness or violence (‘rough’ is an informal variant for ‘roughly’) wordnet

Synonyms

approximately more or less about about about all but

Antonyms

Example

"It was out of the ordinary for Chris to behave so roughly."

Etymology

From rough + -ly.

Related phrases

roughly speaking

More for "roughly"

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