The average user of the language, to even the sophisticated individual who can boast of mastering to some extent, the spoken and written word, often overlook the utter abuse of the adverbs, “hopefully” and “thankfully.” It’s become a culture and fanciful way of shifting the blame to the most maligned word “hopefully,” to distance oneself from blame, should the person concern fail to honour an invitation or execute some tasks assigned to him or her. In fairness to those who blatantly violate the rules guiding the usage of the adverb “hopefully,” its over use over time, could have been seen as normal without ulterior motive firmly attached.
Ignorance has continued to deal a devastating blow to humans’ existence, culminating in legal jargons or terms often over voiced by the bench and bar, at its slightest breach, that ignorance is not an excused in the temple of justice. So, also the blatant disregard and misuse of the phrases, “hopefully” and “thankfully,” be tolerated any more, after reading through this piece. Let me tell you, outrightly that the abuse of the language, particularly, as it concerns the adverbs, “hopefully,” “thankfully have reached a crescendo that they longer excite, but sacrificed on the altar of ignorance or benightedness, that their meanings seem to have been completely lost.
On a rescue mission, the purists and masters of the language, again, have stepped in to right the wrong by explaining the correct usage of the words, ” hopefully ” and “thankfully,” once more, to put to rest the misuse and abuse of the adverbs. Let’s take some lessons here to understand the argument. The adverb, “hopefully,” derived from the adjective “hopeful,” the dictionary explains it as feeling or full of hope, possessing qualities that excite hope, likely to succeed. Capped with the noun “hopefulness. Young and ambitious person, expected to succeed.” Furthermore, hopefully connotes- to be hoped. For example, if all goes according to plan, things will fall in place. Chambers 21st Century Dictionary states it clearly. “Hopefully,” is called sentence adverb because it qualifies the whole sentence not just one word or phrase in it. There are many sentence adverbs, the dictionary advises. Examples, “clearly, honestly, really, thankfully, undoubtedly, usually, etc.
But how we employ them to send the correct message is at the centre of the matter. According to the English pragmatists, “certain lax usages have become rife. Among them, the adverbs “hopefully” and “thankfully,” if I must add here. Chief among these abuses is the use of the word “hopefully” to mean ‘it is to be hoped.’ ‘Hopefully, I shall be arriving on the first train from town’ means, if it means anything at all, ‘I shall be arriving full of hope on the first train from town.’ It does not mean ‘I hope to be arriving on the first train from town.’ “The word ‘thankfully’ has begun to suffer from the same misapplication in phrases like ‘Thankfully, I escaped before the car blew up’ (whereas is no doubt true, but not exactly what the speaker meant), ‘Thankfully, I wasn’t there when the car blew up’ (which cannot be given the benefit of the doubt) and the car, thankfully, didn’t blow up’ (which, even allowing for the fact that people invest their cars with human attributes like blood-mindedness, means nothing at all).
In each phrase the word ” thankfully” could be replaced by “fortunately” without any loss to the intended meaning. “Hopefully” and “thankfully” are misused partly out of laziness.” The language purist quoted above, insists. Again, people don’t like the tag such as ‘I hope,’ partly because they like to avoid it, either because they want to sound impressive or trying to dodge the issue.
