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Patricia Blount wonders: <<... if some kind soul will help me clarify the
distinction between the two words "secondly" and "secondarily". I have
looked up both definitions in three different dictionaries and I know both
are adverbs. "Secondly" is the adverb form of "second" and "secondarily" is
the adverb form of "secondary".>>
That's the correct distinction between the two, and as a result, they are
not synonyms except in one specific case. When used at the beginning of a
sentence or elsewhere to modify the entire sentence, both serve as sentence
adverbs, and modify the entire sentence. With "secondly", the sentence comes
second in a sequence. With "secondarily", the previous sentence introduced
the most important (primary) point, and the current sentence is simply
providing useful but less-important (secondary) information.
The two meanings overlap when the sequence is "in order of importance, here
are the things I want to point out". In that case, secondly is correct (the
sentence is number 2 in the sequence) and so is secondarily (because number
2 is less important than number 1). Which one to use depends on which of
these properties you wish to emphasize.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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