properly
/ˈprɒp(ə)li
/adverb
1Correctly or satisfactorily: ensuring the work is carried out properly a properly drafted agreement...
- I need a keeper, someone who can make me nice meals and make sure I eat properly.
- I got better because someone before me taught me how to eat properly.
- I haven't eaten properly for a few days and my sleeping has been erratic.
1.1Appropriately for the circumstances; suitably or respectably: I’m trying to get my mother to behave properly...
- They were behaving more properly, more respectably, than middle-class people at a funeral.
- Not knowing what to expect, I decided to dress properly and make a very good first impression.
- You are never going to convert hard-line extremists by behaving properly, David concedes.
2 [sentence adverb] In the strict sense; exactly: algebra is, properly speaking, the analysis of equations...
- The drive properly speaking, in the only sense faithful to Freud's discovery, is sexuality.
3 [usually as submodifier] informal, chiefly British Thoroughly; completely: on the first day she felt properly well, Millie sat out on the front steps...
- The learned District Judge failed to take that fully and properly into account when she considered her order.
- Nor, I suggest, are we in this court in a position to explore it properly.