jolly well

English

Adverb

jolly well (not comparable)

  1. (UK, dated, emphatic, sometimes humorous) Certainly, very well.
    You jolly well deserved it.
    • 1904, Edith Nesbit, The New Treasure Seekers, Chapter 1:
      We never had a Christmas in the country before. It was simply ripping. And […] we had games and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.
    • 1920, Eric Leadbitter, Rain Before Seven, page 122:
      "Oh, I shall pull it off. I shall jolly well have to succeed," said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.
    • 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:
      Adrian thought it worth while trying out his new slang. […] ‘That’s beastly talk, Thompson. Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.’
    • 2022 April 6, Philip Haigh, “Passenger numbers increase... and freight must follow”, in RAIL, number 954, page 51:
      For most main lines, that's one or two extra trains every hour. "We jolly well ought to be able to encompass that on a lot of lines," he suggests.

References

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