Q: In a recent blog post, you wrote: “Interestingly, there may be a connection here (however, tenuous) with the verb ‘schmooze.’ ” The word “interestingly” could be replaced by “happily,” “sadly,” “frankly,” etc., and no one would complain. But if it were replaced by “hopefully,” hackles would be raised. I’m interested in your thoughts.
A: The adverb “hopefully” has been hotly debated among usage authorities for the last 60 years or so. We devoted a section of our book about language myths, Origins of the Specious, to the subject.
There are two schools of thought here:
The first school believes that “hopefully” should modify only a specific verb, and that it should have the meaning “in a hopeful manner.” (Example: “He wished hopefully for rain.”)
The second believes that “hopefully” can modify an entire sentence, and that it can have the meaning “it is to be hoped that.” (Example: “Hopefully it will rain.”)
We’re in the second camp. And so is Merriam-Webster, which notes that the use of “hopefully” as a sentence adverb is “grammatically sound” and dates back to the mid-17th century.
This is the dictionary’s earliest example:
“This Discourse hath fully approved itself unto the Judgement of all those that have seen it hitherto, and hopefully it would have wrought some effect upon those that mannage the Affairs of this State, if the Danger of this last Commotion, had not employed all their strength and Attention, to save us from sudden Shipwreck.” From Samuel Hartlib’s A Further Discoverie of the Office of Publick Address for Accomodations, 1648.
Here’s what M-W says in a usage guide:
“Hopefully when used to mean ‘it is hoped’ is a member of a class of adverbs and adverbial phrases known as disjuncts. Disjuncts provide a means for the author or speaker to comment directly to the reader or hearer usually on the content of the sentence to which they are attached. Many other adverbs (such as interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, and unfortunately) are similarly used; most are so ordinary as to excite no comment or interest whatsoever. The ‘it is hoped’ sense of hopefully is entirely standard.”
So if this use of “hopefully” is so old, why all the fuss? Well, though the usage has been known since the 1600s, it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that it became, first, more common, and later, hugely popular. And since the ’60s or so, a misconceived “rule” against it also became popular.
If you don’t mind our cribbing from our own book, here are a few passages from Origins of the Specious:
“It’s hopeless to resist the evolution of ‘hopefully.’
“Usage experts used to insist, and many traditionalists still do, that there’s only one correct way to use ‘hopefully’—as an adverb meaning ‘in a hopeful manner.’ (‘Did my horse win?’ Nathan asked hopefully.’) It’s a hanging offense, the sticklers say, to use it to mean ‘it is hoped’ or ‘let us hope.’ (‘Hopefully he won,’ Nathan said.) The word ‘hopefully,’ the argument goes, should modify a verb, not a whole sentence.
“Oh yeah? Writers have been using adverbs to modify entire sentences for hundreds of years. In fact, the first complete English translation of the Bible, the Wycliffe version of about 1382, uses ‘plainly’ (it was spelled ‘pleynly’ then) as a sentence adverb. Here’s the passage in modern English: ‘Plainly this is my infirmity, and I shall bear it.’
“Many other adverbs have been used in the same way by respected writers. Jane Austen in Mansfield Park (1814): ‘Luckily the strength of the piece did not depend upon him.’ Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution (1837): ‘Happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest.’ Charles Darwin in an 1847 letter: ‘Oddly, I was never at all staggered by this theory until now, having read Mr. Milne’s argument against it.’ Virginia Woolf in a 1939 diary entry: ‘Mercifully we have 50 miles of felt between ourselves and the den.’
“Words like ‘plainly,’ ‘luckily,’ ‘happily,’ ‘oddly,’ ‘curiously,’ ‘surely,’ ‘strictly,’ ‘seriously,’ ‘certainly,’ and more have been used as sentence adverbs for centuries without upsetting anybody. Yet, remarkably, people seem to have drawn the line at ‘hopefully.’ ”
We conclude that “ ‘hopefully’ has long since earned its right to be a sentence adverb. It’s so widely accepted because no other word does the job quite as well.”
[Note: This post was updated on May 23, 2026.]
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