Agnostically

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. In a style that remains neutral about the existence of divine beings or truths
2. With an attitude that refrains from asserting or rejecting the belief in higher powers or ultimate realities
3. In a way that conveys hesitation to claim knowledge about divine or ultimate truths

Etymology: Agnostically is simply agnostic with the adverb ending "-ally" attached, so the interesting history lies in the stem. Agnostic was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, the English biologist, who devised it in the 1870s to describe his own position: he claimed that questions about God and the ultimate nature of things could not be answered by reason or evidence, and he preferred to make no claim either way. He built it deliberately from Greek, combining "a-", meaning "without", with "gnostikos", "knowing", the same root that gives "Gnostic". The Greek pieces are old. "Gnōsis" meant knowledge, and "agnōstos" in ancient Greek meant unknown or unknowable. Huxley's coinage took that classical material and gave it a new, modern sense, one that did not exist in Greek. The "-ally" ending is a straightforward adverb suffix, descended from the Old English "-līce" and the same ending seen in "likely" and "wisely". It turns the adjective into a description of how someone acts or claims, so agnostically means in the manner of someone who does not claim certainty.