jolly well

jolly well adverb: certainly, very well.

Adverb

jolly well (not comparable)

(UK, dated, emphatic, humorous, sometimes) Certainly, very well.
- You jolly well deserved it.
- We never had a Christmas in the country before. It was simply ripping. And […] we had games and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the village children, and everything you can jolly...1904, E[dith] Nesbit, “(please specify the page)”, in New Treasure Seekers, London: Ernest Benn, →OCLC

I shall jolly well have to succeed," said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.1920, Eric Leadbitter, Rain Before Seven, page 122:
Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.’1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:
"We jolly well ought to be able to encompass that on a lot of lines," he suggests.2022 April 6, Philip Haigh, “Passenger numbers increase... and freight must follow”, in RAIL, number 954, page 51:

What does jolly well mean?: Jolly well means certainly, very well.
How do you use jolly well in a sentence?: I shall jolly well have to succeed," said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.
What part of speech is jolly well?: Jolly well is an adverb.

Adapted from Wiktionary: jolly well (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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