hopefully

[Lisa Galvin]

I don't know about replacing "hopefully" with one word, but I had a professor long ago that would have said the proper usage in this sentence would be "I hope" rather than "hopefully".

To say hopefully the sun will rise tomorrow is (according to this interpretation) to say that the sun itself is full of hope that it will rise tomorrow.

Lisa Galvin
Seattle

On Apr 4, 2012, at 4:21 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: hopefully
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Apr 4, 2012, at 6:59 PM, Dan Nussbaum wrote:
>
>> In the sentence, "Hopefully, the sun will rise tomorrow" the word hopefully is being used incorrectly. What word should be used?
>>
> To elaborate a bit, the usage claim in the first sentence is incorrect; there's nothing incorrect about the use of "Hopefully" in the example.  Unless, of course, the speaker/writer would prefer that the sun not rise tomorrow but is convinced this wish will not be satisfied, in which case "Hopefully" would be the wrong word choice, and perhaps "Unfortunately" could be used instead.
>
> LH
>
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