Word.ws English Dictionary

worthly

worthly adjective: having great worth or value; valuable; important; dignified; stately; excellent; worthy; deserving (of).

Adjective

worthly (comparative worthlier or more worthly, superlative worthliest or most worthly)

  1. Having great worth or value; valuable; important; dignified; stately; excellent; worthy; deserving (of).
    • It is not good to be alone, / to walk here in this worthely wone15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford...
    • I hope that the few details set down here will induce more worthly contributions along the same line.1918, American Institute of Mining Engineers, Engineering and mining journal

Forms of worthly

comparativeworthlier
comparativemore worthly
superlativeworthliest
superlativemost worthly

Origin of worthly

From Middle English worthely, wurthlich, from Old English weorþlīċ (“important, valuable, splendid, worthy, estimable, honorable, distinguished, exalted, fit, becoming”), from Proto-Germanic *werþalīkaz (“worthy”), equivalent to worth + -ly. Cognate with Old Frisian werdelik, Old Saxon werthlīk, Old High German werdlīh.

Words formed from worthly

Questions about worthly

What does worthly mean?
Worthly means having great worth or value; valuable; important; dignified; stately; excellent; worthy; deserving (of).
What part of speech is worthly?
Worthly is an adjective.

Words near worthly in the dictionary

  1. Worthley
  2. Worthleys
  3. worthlier
  4. worthliest
  5. worthliness
  6. worthly
  7. worths
  8. worthship
  9. worthwhile
  10. worthwhileness
  11. worthwile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: worthly (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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