promptly

adverb

prompt·​ly ˈpräm(p)t-lē 

ˈpräm-plē

1

: in a prompt manner : without delay : very quickly or immediately

I'm going to speak French again, something I learned in school and promptly forgot.

—Deanna Pai

Treatment is promptly resumed until the virus is suppressed again, and then stopped to see if the patient's immune system is able to keep the viral levels in check.

—Joan Stephenson

2

: exactly at a particular time or the correct time

She arrived promptly at 7:00 p.m. as we had agreed.

Synonyms of promptly

• immediately
• instantly
• now

Examples of promptly in a Sentence

shipped the package promptly so that it would arrive on time

Recent Examples on the Web

The federal government promptly appealed the decision on Friday evening. — Safiyah Riddle, Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2026

Rather than throwing out the rule immediately, which could have left the program without wage rates, Sherriff left it in place and told the department to promptly develop a replacement. — Molly A. Wallace, Fortune, 28 Oct. 2026

Seek care promptly for vaginal bleeding after menopause, unexplained sores or persistent pelvic pain, since those symptoms require evaluation rather than an assumption that GSM is responsible. — Emily Cegielski, Flow Space, 27 Oct. 2026

With this decision, one of the last important barriers to gerrymandering fell, and many state governments promptly set off on a spree of biased mapmaking, hoping to stack the deck before the big card game this November. — J. B. MacKinnon, Harpers Magazine, 27 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1