Etymology

shrewdly

S1H4R1E1W4D2L1Y4

Today it means: In a shrewd manner. Full definition →

Middle English schrewedly ← Proto-Germanic *līką ← Proto-Indo-European *leyg-
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Middle Englishschrewed
  2. Proto-Indo-European*leyg-
  3. Proto-Germanic*līką
  4. Middle Englishschrewedly
  5. English todayshrewdly

Inherited from Middle English schrewedly (“wickedly, harshly”). By surface analysis, shrewd + -ly.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.