hopefully

The use of the word hopefully has probably provoked more irritation in the past decade than any other controversial item of English usage.

Nobody objects to it when used in its traditional meaning, recorded as early as 1639, ‘full of hope; in a hopeful way’:

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive,
and the true success is to labour.

The objections are directed against the word when it is used to mean ‘it is to be hoped’: ? Hopefully the fighting has stopped. This sense is recorded as existing in 1932, and seems to be of American origin. Only in the early 1970s did it come to be widely used in Britain.

The objections to it seem to be fourfold: first, much of the British objection to it has been that it is an Americanism. Yet Americans too have fiercely criticised the new use of hopefully.

Secondly, people have misguidedly argued that hopefully, as an adverb, has the grammatical duty to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, whereas in its new sense its function is instead to modify an entire sentence. The word basically, for instance, when used at the beginning of a sentence, is widely disliked by purists. Yet it has long been a feature of English that adverbial expressions of various kinds can be used to modify or comment on whole sentences:

Frankly, the fighting has stopped.
Naturally the fighting has stopped.
Admittedly, the fighting has stopped.

Why then should hopefully not be accepted too?

But hopefully is not really on a par with frankly, naturally, admittedly, and similar ‘sentence adverbs’. They can all be paraphrased in ways that (without resorting to I or we) use their underlying adjectival forms:

To be frank, the fighting has stopped.
As is natural,/It is natural that the fighting has stopped.
As must be admitted, the fighting has stopped.

Hopefully has only one impersonal ‘paraphrase’:

It is hopeful that the fighting has stopped.

But this would, in most contexts, not be a true paraphrase at all of ? Hopefully the fighting has stopped. Instead, it would usually mean ‘Encouragingly, the fighting has stopped’ or ‘It is a hopeful sign, that the fighting has stopped’. If the word ?? hopedly or ?? hopeably had been used instead, (on the model of admittedly or presumably), a true paraphrase could emerge:

It is hoped/hopeable that the fighting has stopped.

Unfortunately, the words ?? hopedly and ?? hopeably do not really exist. (It is possible that the sentence adverb hopefully developed among German immigrants in America as the equivalent of the useful German sentence adverb hoffentlich. If only ?? hopedly or ?? hopeably had been available to them, they would have chosen one or other of them in preference to hopefully, since there is another German adverb hoffnungsvoll that corresponds to hopefully in its old sense of ‘in a hopeful way’.)

There are other sentence adverbs besides hopefully that end in -fully. The commonest are truthfully, delightfully, mercifully, thankfully, and regretfully. Truthfully and delightfully can have a true paraphrase:

To be truthful,/It is delightful that the fighting has stopped.

Thankfully and mercifully cannot usually be paraphrased in this way, but they do not really have a ‘false paraphrase‘ either in the way that hopefully does. So although thankfully and mercifully are condemned by purists, the condemnation is nothing like as ferocious as that which hopefully endures.

Regretfully, finally, is simply a mistake (an increasingly common one) for regrettably, which can be paraphrased:

As is regrettable, the fighting has stopped.

Regretfully is condemned, certainly, but it is a mistake that is easily eradicated, whereas hopefully is much more deeply rooted in people's vocabularies, and therefore much more challenging to the purists.

This rather complicated explanation of the uniquely ‘wrong’ formation of hopefully is unlikely to have occurred explicitly to most of the purists who condemn the word. But they do perhaps have an intuition of the anomaly, and this would account for their powerful feeling of unease about hopefully as a sentence adverb, and their extraordinarily vehement criticism of it.

The third basis for the objection to hopefully is the danger of ambiguity it produces. If used at the beginning of a sentence, hopefully (like thankfully) is unlikely to be misunderstood:

? Hopefully, he will pay his debts.
? Thankfully, he paid his debts.

Clearly hopefully and thankfully are sentence adverbs here rather than simple adverbs meaning ‘in a hopeful spirit’ and ‘in a thankful spirit’.

And if used at the end of a sentence, they are also unlikely to be misunderstood, since this time they clearly function as ordinary adverbs, in their traditional senses of ‘in a hopeful/thankful spirit’

He will pay his debts hopefully.
He paid his debts thankfully.

If placed in the middle of the sentence, hopefully and thankfully are perhaps ambiguous:

? He will hopefully pay his debts.
? He thankfully paid his debts.
? There is the sphere of literary and literary-philosophic essays addressed either to fellow-mandarins or, hopefully, to a general literate public.

But context or (in speech) intonation will usually indicate the intended sense. Besides, many unobjectionable sentence adverbs are also open to the charge of ambiguity when placed in the middle of a sentence:

? What she told me frankly can't be repeated.

The [fourth and] last of the standard objections to hopefully as a sentence adverb is, simply, that English has no need for the word. Most British people after 1, got along without it until the 1970s. There was no real lexical gap for hopefully to fill: people used the expressions I hope/I hope that/I hope so; with luck; and it is to be hoped/as is hoped, and so on.

And yet, perhaps hopefully has an advantage over all of these. Unlike I hope, and so on, hopefully is impersonal, and might at times sound either less self-important or more self-assured. In various settings, there would be a distinct difference in tone between these two sentences:

I hope that the Chancellor will now press for a substantial rise in the base rate.
Hopefully the Chancellor will now press for a substantial rise in the base rate.

According to the context, the first sentence might sound selfish or subjective or needlessly tentative; the second sentence, using hopefully, might sound confident or disinterested, and so on.

And whereas with luck is perfectly suitable in its place—With luck we’ll catch enough fish to save buying dinner—in other contexts it would be far less appropriate than hopefully:

Hopefully, the jury will clear you on all charges.
With luck, the jury will clear you on all charges.

Finally, it is to be hoped and as is hoped and so on can be very awkward. The British usage expert H.W. Fowler, in his famous manual Modern English Usage, offers two examples in which hoped is used in expressions of this sort with ‘deplorable results’:

…the final arrangements for what is hoped will prove a ‘monster demonstration’.
…whose self-sacrificing services for the Empire may be hoped even yet not to be at an end.

To rectify the first of these examples, Fowler recommends:

…the final arrangements for what it is hoped will prove a ‘monster demonstration’.

For the second example Fowler recommends:

…whose self-sacrificing services for the Empire are not even yet, it may be hoped, at an end.

Fowler would readily admit that these versions, though now much improved, are still fairly ponderous. He wrote before the rise of hopefully as a sentence adverb. If he were writing today, it is possible that he would have approved the streamlining in the following versions:

…the final arrangements for what hopefully will prove a ‘monster demonstration’.
…whose self-sacrificing services for the Empire are hopefully even yet not at an end.

The simplicity and (if properly controlled) clarity of hopefully may yet tilt the balance decisively in its favour. Certainly it has now gained the acceptance, considered or unconsidered, of many much-admired and careful users of English:

? We are here to celebrate and rejoice that this old jewel in the crown of London is to glimmer and hopefully shine sweetly and brilliantly again.

? The hard truth which President Reagan hopefully is beginning to realise is that there is no escape from serious dialogue and negotiation with the Soviet Union.

Yet the purists continue to protest, and as always, it is best to think twice before ignoring their protests.

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