Hopefully parsing hopefully

Dear Brady

I have long supposed it an error to use ‘hopefully’ where I mean ‘I hope’. Sadly I can find no evidence to support this. Happily I have you to ask. Hopefully I'll get an answer from you soon.

Above, the usage of hopefully is widely deprecated as a sloppy error. But sadly and happily, as similarly (ab?)used, receive no such opprobrium. The late Auberon Waugh, then editor of the Literary Review, not often accused of sloppy writing, wrote to me: Sadly, your subscription has expired. What rule accuses hopefully and excuses sadly?

5mb replies:

You'd like an opinion on this popular bugbear (popular with language columnists, anyway).

'Hopefully' is an adverb. Its primary meaning is 'in a hopeful way.' The secondary meaning, more and more common, is 'I/we hope.'

Take this sentence:

Hopefully the weather will clear.

This is patently silly: weather, though at times animated, is inanimate, and cannot clear in a hopeful manner, or an angry one ("Angrily the weather will clear"), though it may sometimes seem like it.

Or this:

Hopefully we will go to Heaven.

It means that, having died, one will knock on the Pearly Gates hoping for something — cheese doodles, or pillow mints.

However, what most people think they're saying/writing is:

I sure hope we go to heaven.

I'm sure they do, as I am that God will understand. But he'll order the cheese doodles anyway.

However, given that most people know what you mean, you can use it, but try to limit it to informal speaking/writing.

Quotable Quotes, Hopefully

William Safire

The word 'hopefully' has become the litmus test to determine whether one is a language snob or a language slob.

Bill — definitely in the first category — is the language maven for the Sunday NYT, a conservative columnist for the daily NYT and, as speechwriter during the Nixon Administration, the penner of such Spiro Agnewisms as, '. . . the nattering nabobs of negativism.' Bill likes his alliteration and Republicans, but does not like hopefully' used when one means 'I/we hope' and most any Democrat since Democritus first walked around a Greek beach with pebbles in his mouth trying to say 'nattering nabobs of negativism.' [1]

Another Safire Quote

Here she will be "Freestyling" her flavors with a mixture of elements spawning from Afro Latin, HipHop, Dance among others. The project will hopefully capture all the best of what Safire is all about. A past Latin HipHop icon introduced to a new generation.

This usage, by the band Safire, is wrong, but — hey — they're a band.

I hope that this has helped.

5mb

Notes

1 — Democritus — The Laughing Philosopher — was not the guy who did this. But this version makes a better story. Never let the facts get in the way.