right

right, rightly

1. Right is used as an adverb meaning ‘in the right way, in a proper manner’ with a number of verbs, notably do right, go right (as in Nothing went right), guess right, spell something right, treat someone right. In general, however, and especially when the adverb precedes the verb or qualifies an adjective, rightly is the more natural choice:

• One of them was rightly furious as the escaper had whipped…his overcoat —A. Miller, 1976

• These practices were rightly banned generations ago —weblog, BrE 2004.

Rightly is commonly used with so to express approval for something described by a preceding word or clause: She was angry, and rightly so. It is also the more idiomatic choice, in BrE at least, in the phrase if I remember rightly.

2. Right is also idiomatic in the meanings ‘directly, immediately’ or ‘completely’ in phrases such as right away and right now, and in uses such as I'll be right with you and Turn it right off.

3. In an older use now considered archaic in BrE (but still in use in regional AmE), right means ‘very, extremely’ without any notion of rightness in the judgemental sense:

• I was right glad…to see your writing again —Coleridge, 1800

• Miz Wilkes is right sensible, for a woman —Margaret Mitchell, 1936

• My husband reports from Iraq that he's right glad the Aussies aren't leaving —weblog, AmE 2004.

In BrE it remains in standard use only in certain titles and forms of address, such as Right Honourable and Right Reverend. But right has been used informally since the 1960s in BrE as an intensifying adjective in the sense ‘utter, complete’:

• You look a right clown —Iris Murdoch, 1978.