truly

[ troo-lee ]
See synonyms for truly on Thesaurus.com
adverb
  1. in accordance with fact or truth; truthfully: Whatever his faults, he lived a life that can be truly said to be significant.

  2. legitimately; by right: Those assets and properties are no longer truly his.

  1. really; genuinely; honestly: We're truly sorry for the delay.

  2. to the fullest extent or degree: The property should be viewed to truly appreciate all it has to offer.

  3. to a great extent or degree: The film is littered with some truly dreadful sequences.

  4. sincerely (a conventional term used at the end of a letter): Yours truly, Allan Burns.

  5. exactly; accurately; correctly: The clock runs truly.

  6. rightly; properly; duly: To truly worship God, we must know Him and not be ignorant of His glorious nature.

  7. indeed; without doubt; verily: Truly, she is a fair-haired angel.

  8. Archaic. faithfully; loyally.

Origin of truly

1
First recorded before 1000; Middle English treuli, Old English trēowlīce; tru(e) + -ly

word story For truly

The English adverb truly is obviously composed of the adjective true and the suffix -ly, which is used to form adverbs as well as adjectives (such as friendly ). The Old English form is tréowlíce, which means “faithfully,” formed from tréowe “faithful, trustworthy” and the adverb suffix -líce, which becomes -ly in modern English.
Old English -líce ultimately derives from the Germanic noun līkom “body, form, appearance.” This Old English suffix means something like “having the form or appearance of,” and tréowlíce therefore means “appearing faithful, looking trustworthy.”
The Romance languages (such as Spanish, Italian, French) have chosen mind over body in forming adverbs. In Spanish, claro means “clear,” and its adverb is claramente; likewise, Italian chiaro and chiaramente. In Latin this would be a phrase composed of the noun mēns “mind” and the adjective clārus “clear”: clārā mente “with a clear mind.” Even today Spanish (and Portuguese) maintain mente in its original noun sense (and not as an adverb suffix) in a chain of adverbs: thus “distinctly and clearly” is distinta y claramente in Spanish ( distinta e claramente in Portuguese), a usage that also existed in Old Italian and Provençal.

Words Nearby truly

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use truly in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for truly

truly

/ (ˈtruːlɪ) /


adverb
  1. in a true, just, or faithful manner

  2. (intensifier): a truly great man

  1. indeed; really

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012