Word of the day · Tuesday, October 20, 2026

dozily

adverb

In a drowsy, half-awake way. In British English it can also mean in a slow or absent-minded way.

Where it comes from

From dozy plus -ly. Doze came into English in the 1600s, probably from a Scandinavian source like Danish dose, to make drowsy.

Worth knowing

Most -ily adverbs come from -y adjectives that drop the Y: lazy to lazily, cozy to cozily, dozy to dozily. Spelling them with -yly is one of the most common slips in English.

By the letters

• 6letters
• 2vowels (A E I O U)
• Z, Yuncommon letters
• 6different letters

Playing it

Z and Y together make this a high-value word in any game that rewards rare letters. The ending -ILY is a useful three-letter tail to keep in mind whenever an adjective ending in Y shows up.

One letter away

Words you get by changing a single letter, the steps of a word ladder.

• cozily
• dopily
• oozily

In Unsaid

DOZILY was word of the day number 2 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 970 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 9,940 reading down or 7,455 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.