DECISIVELY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does decisively mean? 

• DECISIVELY (adverb)
  The adverb DECISIVELY has 3 senses:

1. with firmness

2. with finality; conclusively

3. in an indisputable degree

  Familiarity information: DECISIVELY used as an adverb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DECISIVELY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

With firmness

Synonyms:

decisively; resolutely

Context example:

'I will come along,' she said decisively

Antonym:

indecisively (lacking firmness or resoluteness)

Pertainym:

decisive (characterized by decision and firmness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

With finality; conclusively

Context example:

the voted settled the argument decisively

Antonym:

indecisively (without finality; inconclusively)

Pertainym:

decisive (determining or having the power to determine an outcome)

Sense 3

Meaning:

In an indisputable degree

Context example:

the Fisher Act of 1918 decisively raised their status and pay

Pertainym:

decisive (unmistakable)

 Context examples 

The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

"Something has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

"Then we'll have to go," she announced decisively.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of one topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed to pass before they met again, except in the company of others—she objected only to a tete-a-tete—they might be able to act as if they had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

She was remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of discernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to pronounce that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne Dashwood.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

“And he's like David, too,” said my aunt, decisively.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"It would never do," he said decisively.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

“Oh dear, no, sir!” I replied, most decisively.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)