perfectly
part of speech
adverb (perfectly)
meaning for a pupil
1) Perfectly means in a perfect way, without any mistakes. tree →
2) Perfectly means completely or very: «perfectly safe», «perfectly fine». tree →
sense in the lessons
In school life pupils copy a pattern perfectly or know their times tables perfectly. In everyday talk «perfectly» makes a word stronger: «It's perfectly safe», «You know perfectly well». In maths shapes fit together perfectly in tessellations. Phrases: perfectly well, perfectly fine, perfectly safe, perfectly still, fit perfectly.
examples
- The anger of the LORD shall not return, until He have executed, and till He have performed the purposes of His heart; in the end of days ye shall consider it perfectly. (Prophets JER.23.20, JPS 1917) tree →
- She sang the song perfectly. tree →
- The jigsaw pieces fit perfectly. tree →
- Stand perfectly still. tree →
- The ice is perfectly safe to skate on — the guard checked. tree →
- You know perfectly well what you did. tree →
- I'm perfectly fine, thanks. tree →
- The cake turned out perfectly. tree →
- But the Weasel was perfectly content. tree →
note
Adverb from «perfect» + «-ly». In everyday talk «perfectly» often means «completely», not «with no mistakes». Tessellating shapes fit perfectly with no gaps or overlaps.
In the corpora
- Imagine walking through long grass and finding a spotted fawn lying perfectly still.
- It's enough to drive one crazy!", calls him "perfectly idiotic", and goes in.
- Grammar terms are useful because they let you talk about how sentences work, though nobody needs to know every term perfectly.
- At home her mum explained that people sometimes stare and go red when they like someone, and that it is perfectly normal.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «perfectly» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.