Unconvincingly

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. Presented in a manner that does not elicit agreement or confidence
2. Done in a manner that lacks credibility or fails to convince others
3. Expressed so that it does not inspire trust or acceptance from listeners

Etymology: "Unconvincingly" is about as plain as English word-building gets: it stacks three layers onto a root that means "to convince." The base is the Latin "convincere," "to prove wrong, overcome by argument," which passed into English as "convince." Add the prefix "un-," meaning "not," and you get "unconvincing," something that fails to persuade. Then the suffix "-ly" turns the adjective into an adverb describing how something is done. The suffix has the longer history. The "-ly" ending descends from an Old English form, "-līċe," which itself came from the Germanic "-līkō," meaning "having the form or appearance of." That is why many English adverbs carry the idea of "in the manner of" something, and why "unconvincingly" describes the manner of a performance rather than the performance itself. The "un-" prefix has an equally old pedigree, traceable to the Old English "un-," which meant "not" and has been used this way since the earliest English.

Synonyms: unpersuasively, weakly

Antonyms: convincingly, persuasively