obviously

obviously — adverb

1. so that anyone watching or listening can see, notice, or work it out for themsel

1.adverbB1
Definition

so that anyone watching or listening can see, notice, or work it out for themselves without help; also placed at the start of a sentence to flag a fact the speaker assumes the listener already knows or will accept without argument.

Example

Obviously, the children were tired after walking around the zoo all afternoon.

sentence-initial 'Obviously,' flagging a fact the listener can easily accept

Maya was obviously upset when Jordan forgot her birthday again.

be + obviously + adjective showing visible emotion

Common collocations
  • obviously upset
  • obviously wrong
  • obviously not
  • very obviously
  • obviously, ...
Synonyms
  • clearly

    very close in meaning; slightly more neutral and less likely to sound condescending.

  • evidently

    more formal; suggests the speaker is drawing a conclusion from evidence rather than stating common knowledge.

  • plainly

    more literary; emphasises that something is in plain sight rather than shared knowledge.

  • of course

    discourse marker only; cannot modify a single adjective the way 'obviously' can.

Antonyms
  • apparently

    marks something as based on hearsay or appearance — the speaker is less certain it is true.

  • supposedly

    signals doubt or distance from the claim, the opposite of 'obviously's confident framing.

Grammar Patterns

Obviously, + clause

be + obviously + adjective

obviously + verb

Usage Note

Frequently sentence-initial as a discourse marker that signals 'we both already know this'. Tone matters: said warmly it builds rapport, but stressed ('OBviously') or paired with 'not' ('Obviously not!') it can sound sharp or condescending, as if the listener should not have asked.

Common Mistakes

He is obviously smart person.
He is obviously a smart person.
keep the article 'a' before the noun phrase; 'obviously' modifies the adjective, not the article.
I obviously don't know the answer, why are you asking?' (said in real annoyance).
I'm not sure, sorry
could you ask Maya?' — overusing 'obviously' to dismiss questions sounds rude in Taiwanese workplace English; soften with 'I'm not sure' instead.

Word family

  • obvious
    adjectiveB1
  • obviousness
    nounC1
  • non-obvious
    adjectiveC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: adverb/1

All five words let a speaker comment on how certain a statement is, but they sit on different points of the certainty scale. 'Obviously' and 'clearly' are the most confident: the speaker treats the fact as visible to anyone — 'She was obviously / clearly exhausted.' 'Clearly' feels slightly more neutral; 'obviously' can carry a 'you should already know this' edge. 'Evidently' is more formal and drier; it suggests the speaker has weighed evidence — 'Evidently, the report was leaked last week.' 'Apparently' moves to the other end: it flags hearsay or surface impression, not certainty — 'Apparently, they're getting married' (someone told me). 'Of course' works only as a discourse marker, not as a modifier of a single adjective: you can say 'Of course she was upset' but not 'She was of course upset' the way you can with 'obviously'.

obviously ↗clearly ↗evidently ↗apparently ↗of course ↗

Common collocations

Adverbs

  • quite obviously
  • most obviously
  • very obviously
  • fairly obviously
  • rather obviously

Phrases

  • obviously not
  • obviously, ...
  • obviously enough
  • as is obviously the case
  • obviously true / false / wrong

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Built in early modern English from the adjective 'obvious' plus the adverb-forming suffix '-ly'. 'Obvious' itself was borrowed in the 1580s from Latin 'obvius', meaning 'in the way' or 'meeting head-on' — formed from 'ob-' ('against, towards') and 'via' ('way, road'). The original sense was almost spatial: something obvious was something you ran into on the road. From there it shifted to 'easy to perceive', and the adverb 'obviously' followed naturally to describe actions or states that meet the observer just as plainly.