Writing for Business - A Whatis.com Blog » definitely http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business Is your grammar as good as your code? Tue, 21 May 2013 19:44:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Defiantly or definitely? Definately? http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/defiantly-or-definitely-definately/ http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/defiantly-or-definitely-definately/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:44:34 +0000 Ivy Wigmore http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/defiantly-or-definitely-definately/ typing Which is correct?
“Thanks to all who ensured that the cloud migration went smoothly. There will _______ be a little something extra in your pay envelopes this week,” the manager announced.
a. definitely
b. defiantly
c. definately

Answer: a

Definitely means for sure.

Defiantly means in bold opposition to some authoritive force.

Definately is not a word.

It makes me wonder — do they realize these are two completely separate words? What word do they use when they mean defiantly?

For your amusement, here are a few Yahoo!Answers about the meaning of definitely vs. defiantly:

Defiantly — a complete agreement or strong affirmation

Defiantly – I dunno, but it has something to do with trickery

I dont know…. I dont think there is a difference, its the same word just different spelling

I was glad to see from a quick Google that I wasn’t the only person seeing defiantly online in otherwise OKish writing. What I often do see, though, when I search on common misspellings, is a lot of entries where people are asking which one is correct. I didn’t see many of those, which leads me to think that people who mistakenly use defiantly think they’re correct. They are definitely wrong.

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