as in intentionally
with full awareness of what one is doing
willfully chose to risk pneumonia by jumping into a freezing lake on a dare
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
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Recent Examples of willfully
Yet, despite how clearly the meme’s lineage can be traced, adults — present company excluded — seem willfully baffled.
—
Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 11 Nov. 2025
The president was charged in 2023 with willfully retaining national defense information.
—Aysha Bagchi, USA Today, 23 Oct. 2025
This willfully blinkered vision, or, more precisely, reëlection platform, ignores the cost in global opinion along with the moral and political fractures within Israel itself.
—David Remnick, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2025
This isn’t to say that the women don’t deserve some privacy, but they are getting paid to share their lives with the public; willfully mischaracterizing what’s happening in their lives during the course of filming goes against the very nature of the show.
—Brian Moylan, Vulture, 17 Oct. 2025
Hernandez Santana was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of firing a 9 mm handgun within a school zone, possessing a firearm within a school zone and willfully or maliciously interfering with or causing interference to any radio communications of any station in the September shooting.
—Darrell Smith, Sacbee.com, 16 Oct. 2025
Often sustainability no longer implies that slave labor wasn’t deployed, or that there hasn’t been a purposeful reduction in the tuna population, but instead that there has been some vague dialogue entered into about not willfully raping the planet.
—Louis J. Esterhazy, Footwear News, 11 Oct. 2025
And suggesting that Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed should be on a Ryder Cup team in 2025 is both willfully obtuse and indicative of a person looking back, not forward.
—Hugh Kellenberger, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025
In 1494, for example, mathematician and ‘father of modern accounting’ Luca Pacioli wrote of Venetian merchants willfully rendering their ledgers illegible.
—Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 1 Oct. 2025
Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 11 Nov. 2025
The president was charged in 2023 with willfully retaining national defense information.
—Aysha Bagchi, USA Today, 23 Oct. 2025
This willfully blinkered vision, or, more precisely, reëlection platform, ignores the cost in global opinion along with the moral and political fractures within Israel itself.
—David Remnick, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2025
This isn’t to say that the women don’t deserve some privacy, but they are getting paid to share their lives with the public; willfully mischaracterizing what’s happening in their lives during the course of filming goes against the very nature of the show.
—Brian Moylan, Vulture, 17 Oct. 2025
Hernandez Santana was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of firing a 9 mm handgun within a school zone, possessing a firearm within a school zone and willfully or maliciously interfering with or causing interference to any radio communications of any station in the September shooting.
—Darrell Smith, Sacbee.com, 16 Oct. 2025
Often sustainability no longer implies that slave labor wasn’t deployed, or that there hasn’t been a purposeful reduction in the tuna population, but instead that there has been some vague dialogue entered into about not willfully raping the planet.
—Louis J. Esterhazy, Footwear News, 11 Oct. 2025
And suggesting that Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed should be on a Ryder Cup team in 2025 is both willfully obtuse and indicative of a person looking back, not forward.
—Hugh Kellenberger, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025
In 1494, for example, mathematician and ‘father of modern accounting’ Luca Pacioli wrote of Venetian merchants willfully rendering their ledgers illegible.
—Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 1 Oct. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for willfully
Adverb
-
Dispatch audio obtained by PEOPLE confirmed that Kneeland’s girlfriend dialed 911, afraid that the football star would intentionally harm himself.—
Angel Saunders,
PEOPLE,
7 Nov. 2025
-
The city of Craig has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle claims brought by a man who suffered major injuries after a law enforcement officer intentionally plowed into him with an SUV.—
Sam Tabachnik,
Denver Post,
7 Nov. 2025
Adverb
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Judge Richard Taranto, writing in dissent, countered that Congress had deliberately given presidents broad discretion under IEEPA to handle emergencies involving national security or foreign commerce.—
Robert Alexander,
MSNBC Newsweek,
5 Nov. 2025
-
Still, humans have done more damage by deliberately planting the honeysuckle in the first place, some say.—
Sophie Hartley,
IndyStar,
5 Nov. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Willfully.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/willfully. Accessed 21 Nov. 2025.
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