Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

overtly

adverbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,511 of 15,258leans written

Overtly means openly, and without any attempt to hide it. Overtly political, overtly hostile, not overtly.

It is the opposite of covertly and is nearly always used to mark a contrast, since saying something is not overtly anything implies it is so underneath. It is a favourite of criticism and of intelligence writing alike.

Definitions of overtly

  1. 1adverbovertlyOpenly, and without any attempt to hide it.C1

    “The crowd was overtly hostile, shouting and throwing bottles at the police.”

overtly is a manner.

Also accepted in games: blatantly

Where it comes from

  1. Old French

    overt

  2. Middle French

    ouvert

  3. Anglo-Norman

    overt

  4. Middle English

    overt

  5. English

    overt

  6. English, today

    overtly

Built from

  • uverte · Middle English — open, uncovered; unfastened; accessible, unobstructed; clear, manifest
  • uvert · Old French — opened
  • uvrir · Old French — to open
  • aperiō · Latin — to open, uncover

From overt + -ly. overt comes from Middle English overt, uverte (“open, uncovered; unfastened; accessible, unobstructed; clear, manifest”), from Anglo-Norman overt, Middle French ouvert, Old French overt, ouvert, uvert (“opened”) (modern French ouvert), past participle of Anglo-Norman -, Old French ovrir, ouvrir, uvrir (“to open”), from Latin operire, variant of Latin aperīre (“to open”), from aperiō (“to open, uncover”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂epó (“away; from”) + h₂wer- (“to cover, shut”). The English word is a a doublet of apert and ouvert.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

overtly in the wild

  • The song, which features rapper Pogo, deals overtly with police brutality and racism.

    I Don't Give a Fuck

  • The lyrics are often overtly explicit and graphic, sometimes to the point of being comical or offensive.

    Dirty rap

  • The sonnet belongs to the Dark Lady sequence, which distinguishes itself from The Fair Youth sequence by being more overtly sexual in its passion.

    Sonnet 151

  • The majority of these poems are overtly sexual in content.

    White Stains

  • In 1999, the editors described "the journal's recent move toward a more overtly political discussion of historical topics".

    Radical History Review

1 / 2

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.

Related words

the overt family

overtovertly

overtly — used about once every 13,896 pages · #12,511 · point at the bar for the others