Word.ws English Dictionary

mercenarily

mercenarily adverb: in a mercenary way, for selfish reason of profit or gain.

Adverb

mercenarily (comparative more mercenarily, superlative most mercenarily)

  1. In a mercenary way, for selfish reason of profit or gain.
    • I accused her in set terms of giving me the heave-ho in order that she could mercenarily marry a richer man.1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter X

Forms of mercenarily

comparativemore mercenarily
superlativemost mercenarily

Origin of mercenarily

From mercenary + -ly.

Questions about mercenarily

What does mercenarily mean?
Mercenarily means in a mercenary way, for selfish reason of profit or gain.
What part of speech is mercenarily?
Mercenarily is an adverb.

Words near mercenarily in the dictionary

  1. mercement
  2. mercements
  3. mercenarian
  4. mercenarians
  5. mercenaries
  6. mercenarily
  7. mercenariness
  8. mercenarism
  9. mercenary
  10. mercenaryism
  11. mercer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mercenarily (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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