admittedly
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
you use this to admit that a fact is true, especially before you say something that disagrees with it.
used as a conjunctive adverb to signal a concession, typically followed by a counterpoint introduced by 'but' or 'however'.
Simple“Admittedly, the car is very old, but it is still very reliable for long trips.”
In context“Admittedly, the initial investment is substantial; however, the long-term savings on energy costs will eventually justify the expenditure.”
UsageUsually placed at the beginning of a sentence or clause to introduce a concession.
Synonyms
“We’ve got almost identical aluminum and glass sandwich designs, which do admittedly look very nice.”
“That’s cool if you are a fan of Google’s AI research tool, which is admittedly one of the better things the company has done with LLMs.”
From admitted + -ly.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.