Word.ws English Dictionary

initially

/ɪˈnɪʃəli/

initially adverb: at the beginning.

Adverb

initially (not comparable)

  1. At the beginning.
    • Initially, I found city life incredibly difficult, but now I'm used to it.
    • In his submission to the UN, [Christof] Heyns points to the experience of drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles were intended initially only for surveillance, and their use for offensive purposes was prohibited, yet once strategists realised their perceived advantages as a means of carrying out targeted...2013 June 7, Ed Pilkington, “‘Killer robots’ should be banned in advance, UN told”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2022, page 6
  2. Relating to initials.

initially meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

initially in Hindi

initially
प्रारंभिक prārambhik

initially in Urdu

initially
سر sir, ابتدائی طور پر ibtedāī taur par

initially in Bengali

শুরুতে, প্রারম্ভে, প্রথমে

initially in Malayalam

at first, at the start, at the outset
അദ്യമായി, ആരംഭത്തിൽ, ഉപക്രമമായി, നടാടെ, മുന്നേ, തുടക്കത്തിൽ
More languagesFewer languages
initially in Nepali
काजी kājī
initially in Thai
ตอนแรก

Examples of initially in a sentence

  • The copyright of any original writing belongs initially and properly to its author.
  • Setbacks were initially used for structural reasons, but now are often mandated by land use codes.
  • Though initially adopting a hard-line stance, the politician soon started to backpedal.

All 40 example sentences with initially

Synonyms of initially

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of initially

Origin of initially

From initial + -ly.

Questions about initially

What does initially mean?
Initially means at the beginning.
What is initially in Hindi?
Initially in Hindi is प्रारंभिक (prārambhik). See Initially meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is initially?
Initially is an adverb.
How do you pronounce initially?
Initially is pronounced /ɪˈnɪʃəli/.

Words near initially in the dictionary

  1. initializing
  2. initialled
  3. initialler
  4. initiallers
  5. initialling
  6. initially
  7. initialness
  8. initials
  9. initiand
  10. initiands
  11. initiary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: initially (page history and authors); प्रारंभिक (Hindi) (page history and authors); ابتدائی طور پر (Urdu) (page history and authors); Initially (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); initially (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); काजी (Nepali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-initially.wav.

Cite this entry: “initially.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/initially. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.