Word
downright
Phoneticsdown·right
US/ˈdaʊnˌɹaɪt/
UK/dˈaʊnɹaɪt/
Definition
adv. used to emphasize that something is completely true or extreme. You add it before an adjective to show strong feeling.
adv. used to intensify an adjective or adverb, indicating that something is completely or unreservedly so. Typically placed immediately before the word it modifies.
Examples
“The weather was downright freezing yesterday.”
“The manager was downright rude to the new staff members during the morning meeting.”
“While the initial proposal seemed reasonable, the final terms were downright exploitative, leaving the workers with no room for negotiation.”
Examples
simple
“The weather was downright freezing yesterday.”
contextual
“The manager was downright rude to the new staff members during the morning meeting.”
complex
“While the initial proposal seemed reasonable, the final terms were downright exploitative, leaving the workers with no room for negotiation.”
Real-World Examples
“And it was all led by the hypnotic weightlessness of the downright odd Can’t Get You Out of My Head .” “In the eyes of many people, vultures are downright ugly.” Etymology
The adverb is derived from Middle English dounright, dounriȝt (“right down, straight down; face down; vertically; used for emphasis: outright, downright”), and then either: possibly an aphetic form of adounright (“straight down; directly, immediately (?)”), from adoun (“downward”, adverb) (from Old English adūn, adūne (“down, downward”, adverb), ultimately from dūn (“hill, mountain”), from Proto-West Germanic dūnā, dūnu (“hill; sand dune”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European dʰewh₂- (“haze, mist; smoke”)) + right (“direct; straight; etc.”, adjective) (from Old English riht (“straight; etc.”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to straighten”)); or * from doun (“down, downward; etc.”, adverb) (from Old English dūne (“down”), ultimately from dūn (“hill, mountain”): see above) + right. By surface analysis, down (adverb) + right (adjective). The adjective and noun are derived from the adverb. Noun noun sense 1 (“low grade of wool”) may be from the obsolete adjective adjective sense 2.2 (“in its most basic form; ordinary”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/downright