mentally

adverb

men·​tal·​ly ˈmen-tᵊl-ē 

1

: in the mind

Mentally he promised himself that he would never again use a collar on any living creature.

—Brian Jacques

: using the mind

able to mentally calculate large sums

2

: with regard to the mind or its capacity

physically and mentally healthy people

a mentally competent adult

a mentally challenging activity

… if you try to hide the fact that you feel mentally inadequate, and so go around making jokes about your own dullness and acting as if it didn't bother you at all …

—David Foster Wallace

I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

—Rick Riordan

Examples of mentally in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But again, managing a side hustle on top of a demanding full-time job, was not only hard financially, but also mentally, as she was left with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from working as a bedside nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic. —Jasmine Laws, MSNBC Newsweek, 6 Dec. 2025

Dyscalculia often appears as difficulty in understanding numbers and their value, comprehending or even remembering basic math concepts, and difficulty in doing math problems mentally. —Megan McGibney, Parents, 3 Dec. 2025

As the search continues, his 50-year-old mother, described by authorities as mentally ill, remains at Rikers Island, locked up since early October on a Brooklyn Family Court civil warrant charging her with contempt for not revealing where her son has vanished to. —Colin Mixson, Mercury News, 3 Dec. 2025

But the Penguins clearly stayed mentally focused and their penalty killing did the job. —Josh Yohe, New York Times, 2 Dec. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for mentally

• accidentally
• detrimentally
• fundamentally
• governmentally
• incidentally
• incrementally
• instrumentally
• sentimentally
• temperamentally
• coincidentally
• environmentally
• experimentally