A Literary Study of the Word Utterly

On the word utterly...

I utterly adore the word utterly.

I remember when I first heard the word. I had selected the Clarice Bean novel Utterly Me as a prize for writing a bunch of facts about the world cup when I was around 10.

Well that’s a lie actually, I first saw the word on the fake butter my parents would buy: utterly butterfly. But utterly in the context of the novel makes me feel a different way compared to a tub of butter!

I was in awe of the word and wanted to use it everywhere. I’m not sure why it faded from my vocabulary, probably because it’s really a proper adverb, but it would have been useful in a multitude of my conversations over the last decade to describe how I was feeling.

It conveys perfectly the feeling of something being absolute and definite while also having an air of lightness and beauty about it. Absolutely and definitely are bold and abrasive, but utterly feels smooth and replicates the butterflies floating around in your stomach when you love someone unconditionally. I suppose the ten-year-old me didn’t even know what that feeling was.

Now in my twenties, I re-discovered the word after reading Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss. Patrick told Martha:

“Utterly ... I loved you utterly”.

The repetition just gets you. I want nothing more than to be loved utterly. Not even to be utterly loved, but to be utterly liked, utterly interesting … utterly anything to someone. Even utterly annoying. I want to consume their every thought. I just want to to be someone’s utterly.

So this is an ode to utterly. One of the most beautiful and all-consuming words out there. Please can we use it more.