steeply
Meaning
rising or falling at a sharp angle
to a very great and often unreasonable degree
Structure
Usage
the road climbs steeply up the mountainside.
prices have risen steeply in the last quarter.
the cliff fell away steeply to the sea below.
Etymology
The adverb 'steeply' is formed from the adjective 'steep', which originates from the Old English 'stēap', a word with a core meaning of something high, lofty, or projecting. This Old English term is traced back to the Proto-Germanic 'staupaz', and further to the Proto-Indo-European root '(s)teu-', meaning 'to push, stick, knock, beat', which also gives rise to words connoting thickness or a mass pushed together. The semantic evolution moved from the general concept of height and projection to the specific geometric sense of a sharply rising or falling slope. The addition of the adverbial suffix '-ly', itself of Old English origin, creates a word that describes the manner of this sharp ascent or descent, and by extension, any rapid or extreme increase or decrease.
Analysis
steep (from old english 'stēap', meaning high, lofty, deep, projecting) + ly (from old english '-līċe', an adverbial suffix forming adverbs from adjectives).