hotly

adverbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,697 of 15,258leans written

Hotly means with strong and angry feeling. Hotly denied, hotly contested, argue hotly.

It fixes itself to a few verbs and refuses others — hotly denied and hotly disputed are everywhere, hotly agreed is not. The heat is the metaphor English has used for anger for a thousand years. Note the Old English sense, meaning fervently.

Definitions of hotly

1adverbhotlyWith strong and angry feeling.C1
“The two teams hotly disputed the referee's decision.”

hotly is a manner of feeling.

Where it comes from

Old English hatlice means ardently or fervently, from hat, hot, plus the -lice ending that makes adverbs.

Old English
hātlīċe — ardently, fervently
Middle English
*hotly
English, today
hotly

From Middle English hotly, hatliche, from Old English hātlīċe (“ardently, fervently”); equivalent to hot + ly.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

hotly in the wild

However, at the time, the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) was still hotly contending with other factions, including warlord Adan Madobe-Habsade, who captured Baidoa.
2002 Somali Reconciliation Conference
The resulting by-election on 27 April 1900 was hotly contested, and won by Joseph Witheford.
William Crowther (New Zealand politician)
Robertson, who emerged from a close and hotly contested Republican primary as the narrow winner.
1942 United States Senate election in Wyoming
The "hotly contested" match-up was the first game to be broadcast nationwide on radio.
1922 Princeton vs. Chicago football game
Prior to 1890 its attribution had alternated between Donatello and his studio and its date had also been hotly debated.
Piot Madonna

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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