criminally

the word 'criminally' is built upon the latin noun crimen, which originally meant "charge" or "verdict" before specializing to mean "offense" or "crime." the adjectival suffix -alis was added to form criminalis, meaning "pertaining to crime." this adjective was borrowed into english as 'criminal.' the old english adverbial suffix -līce, used to form adverbs from adjectives, was then appended, creating 'criminally.' the semantic journey thus moves from the concept of a formal accusation to the modern abstract senses of relating to illegal acts or being profoundly wrong.

Structure: crimin (crime) + al (adjective suffix) + ly (adverb suffix) crimin (from latin crimen, meaning "charge, judgment, offense", functioning as the core root); al (from latin -alis, a suffix forming adjectives meaning "of, relating to", functioning as a derivational suffix); ly (from old english -līce, a suffix forming adverbs from adjectives, functioning as a derivational suffix)