Is mediocrely a word?

I've checked some online dictionaries and have not found it in some while it does exist in others and so wonder if it's a word or not and unsure how to be sure about such things? Given a word, how can one be sure it exists? Is there an official online dictionary that can be trusted?

Solution 1:

No, there's no "official" source of English vocabulary. Generally, you're allowed to form adverbs by adding -ly to adjectives, so your first guess should be that mediocrely meaning "in a mediocre manner" is a word. Then check to see whether people use it like this from Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship by Mark Busby:

In high school I did a surprising number of things mediocrely. Among these were baseball, basketball, 4-H work, tennis, track, ready writing, editorial writing, extemporaneous speech, drama, declaiming, trombone playing, and debating.

The google reports almost 40K uses online. Even allowing for instances of debate over whether it's a word, that leaves enough to validate your first guess.

Solution 2:

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for mediocrely since OED Third Edition, June 2001. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/251632