In the sense of ‘in a hopeful way’, hopefully is a long-established and unobjectionable adverb: We travelled more hopefully after hearing the news of Nicholas’s miraculous release.
In its more modern sense of ‘I hope that’ or ‘with luck’, it has aroused the opposition of purists: ? Hopefully the letter will arrive tomorrow.
Among the objections are: that it is an Americanism; that it is ill-formed (it should perhaps be hopedly or hopeably instead); that it usurps the older sense of hopefully, and could even cause ambiguity (? Hopefully he has paid off the last of his debts), and that as an adverb it has the grammatical duty to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb – but not an entire clause.
This last objection is no more cogent than the others. Modern English has a great many ‘sentence’ adverbs, widely used to reflect the attitude of the speaker or writer – Unfortunately, I can’t join you – or the truth or likelihood of the event mentioned: Probably I’ll go straight home.
Not that all such ‘sentence’ adverbs escape criticism. Purists dislike the use, or at least the widespread overuse, of basically, for instance, at the beginning of sentences: ? Basically, the melting of the fuse wire breaks the electrical current. And three other -fully words often attract similar criticism to that of hopefully: namely, mercifully, thankfully, and regretfully – often used in place of regrettably.
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