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mostly

UK/ˈməʊstli/US/ˈmoʊstli/
adverbA23 meaningsVery common — you will meet it every day · #1,225 of 15,258leans written

Mostly means for the greater part — not all of it, but close. The audience was mostly children, the fridge is mostly empty, I mostly cycle to work.

It does two jobs. One is proportion: the crowd was mostly students tells you what the bulk of it was made of. The other is habit, so I mostly eat at home means most of the time rather than every time. It goes before the main verb but after am, is and are — she is mostly at home on Fridays. Do not swap it for most, which stands in front of a noun: most people agree, never mostly people agree. In Indian English it carries a third sense, probably, borrowed from local languages, as in he'll mostly come tomorrow.

Definitions of mostly

  1. 1adverbmostlyFor the greater part; mainly.A2~82%

    “The soup is mostly potato.”

    synonyms: mainly, chiefly, largely

  2. 2adverbtimeMost of the time.A2~16%

    “We mostly meet on Thursdays.”

  3. 3adverbprobablyProbably, in Indian English.C1~2%

    “She will mostly be at the office by nine.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: mainly

Where it comes from

From most + -ly. The sense “probably” is a calque from Indian languages such as அனேகமாக.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Adjectives, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

mostly in the wild

  • The remaining carbonate rock is mostly dolomite, a closely related rock, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO3)2.

    Limestone

  • The Israeli courts have been influenced in recent years by American Law and Canadian Law and to a lesser extent by Continental Law (mostly from Germany).

    Israeli law

  • Freemen on the land are mostly present in Commonwealth countries.

    Freeman on the land movement

  • HFMD should not be confused with foot-and-mouth disease (also known as hoof-and-mouth disease), which mostly affects livestock.

    Hand, foot, and mouth disease

  • Historically, young children were mostly affected, but it is now more common among older children and adults.

    Epiglottitis

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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.