October 2, 1998

thusly

Please give me your opinion of the word "thusly." It sounds like a silly and superfluous word to me, since "thus" is already an adverb. I can't remember when I first heard "thusly," but I have the impression it was meant to be funny--a deliberate illiteracy--but I have also heard it in serious contexts. President Clinton used it recently in his funeral oration for the White House guard who was killed in the line of duty. In a speech that deserved utmost dignity, "thusly" stuck out like a sore thumb.

One can draw two conclusions from this: that President Clinton and his speechwriters are completely out of touch with contemporary standards of dignified speech, or that thusly is not as bad as you think it is.

I'd guess that most people would vote for the former. Thusly is quite frequently objected to by those whose business it is to object to such things. The second edition of the American Heritage Dictionary noted that "thusly is termed unacceptable by a great majority of the Usage Panel." The editors of the Harper's Dictionary of Contemporary Usage don't even bother sending the term to their usage panel; after a short (and historically inaccurate) discussion of the term, they conclude, "In any event it is an abomination." You can get similar opinions from many usage guides.

However, since you asked for my opinion, I'll say that I love it. The word thus itself is very formal in modern usage, and is thus inappropriate in many constructions. Thusly lowers the tone of things just a bit.

Historically, thusly is first recorded in the 1860s, when it was attributed to Josh Billings, a well-known humorist known for his ungrammatical style. It was used, infrequently, in humorous or facetious constructions for some time thereafter. There are some uses that appear to be serious in the late nineteenth century, but it's hard to be sure at this remove. Reasonable evidence for the word's serious use starts to pile up in the late 1940s or so.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage demonstrates that thusly is chiefly used in two constructions: when it follows the verb it modifies ("I have the vision of a little old man...who gives himself silent chuckles by seating people thusly"--William F. Buckley, Jr., in Esquire, 1974) and more specifically when it immediately precedes a passage set off by a colon. This is the construction that President Clinton used in the address you mention:

To the Chestnut and Gibson families and my fellow Americans, the Bible defines a good life thusly: "To love justice, to do mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." (July 28, 1998)

When thusly is used in substitution for thus in other contexts, it can indeed seem out of place, but otherwise we can at least observe that thusly is frequent in standard sources, and is not normally used for humorous effect. You yourself note that you have heard it in serious contexts. In one's own writing, one is of course free to avoid it, substitute thus, or, perhaps most reasonable of all, use another phrase such as "in this way," "in this manner," or the like.

Thusly is almost never found outside of American sources.