Loading page
say it: LAHY-klee
likely is an adjective and adverb meaning "has a good chance of being the case or of coming about". It carries 5 recorded senses.
has a good chance of being the case or of coming about
“these services are likely to be available to us all before long”
“she is likely to forget”
“a likely place for a restaurant”
“the broken limb is likely to fall”
“rain is likely”
“a likely topic for investigation”
“likely candidates for the job”
likely but not certain to be or become true or real
“a likely result”
“he foresaw a probable loss”
with considerable certainty; without much doubt
“He is probably out of the country”
“in all likelihood we are headed for war”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for likely come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.