terribly

adverb

ter·​ri·​bly ˈter-ə-blē 

ˈte-rə-

1

: to an extreme degree : very, extremely

became terribly ill

had a terribly nice time

got terribly excited

I had tried a little radio before the war and hadn't been terribly impressed with it at the time.

—Walter Cronkite

He and Jimmy got into a quarrel about the girl's being fired, and it got terribly bitter.

—Virginia Foster Durr

2

: in a terrible way : very badly, poorly, or unpleasantly

behaving terribly

They were treated terribly.

This can be regarded as a somewhat progressive attitude because it is true that women were terribly abused in the Roman world.

—Norman F. Cantor

And then the next year I played terribly and finished close to last.

—Gene Littler

3

: very much

I miss you terribly.

Synonyms of terribly

• extremely
• very
• incredibly
• too
• highly
• badly
• so
• damned
• damn
• severely
• really
• desperately
• seriously
• far
• intensely
• greatly

Examples of terribly in a Sentence

I'm terribly sorry to bother you

Recent Examples on the Web

Given that humans at OpenAI had decided to turn off some safeguards for the test, some have argued the outcome should not have been terribly surprising. — ABC News, 23 July 2026

In a world that had long equated labor with the physical act of making things, such a shift was seen as not terribly manly, and potentially dangerous to society as a whole. — Jake Lundberg, The Atlantic, 23 July 2026

The documentary Shipwrecked uses survivor interviews, black box recordings, and more to find out how things went so terribly wrong. — K. Thor Jensen, PC Magazine, 17 July 2026

Japanese Knotweed Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) can’t be ignored due to its terribly invasive quality. — David Beaulieu, The Spruce, 17 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for terribly

• unbearably