Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb In actual truth or fact.
  • adverb To a great degree; very much.
  • adverb Very; utterly.
  • adverb Without a doubt; indeed.
  • interjection Used to express surprise, skepticism, displeasure, or interest.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Royally; in a royal or regal manner; like a king.
  • in a real manner; with or in reality; in fact, and not in appearance only; in truth; actually; truly.
  • Indeed; to tell the truth; as a fact: often used as a slight corroboration of an opinion or declaration, or interrogatively or exclamatorily to express slight surprise.
  • Synonyms Truly, absolutely, certainly, verily, positively.
  • To form or arrange again; recompose.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb obsolete Royally.
  • adverb In a real manner; with or in reality; actually; in truth.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb modal Actually; in fact; in reality.
  • adverb informal, as an intensifier Very (modifying an adjective); very much (modifying a verb).
  • interjection Indicating surprise at, or requesting confirmation of, some new information; to express skepticism.
  • interjection colloquial, sarcastic Indicating that what was just said was obvious and unnecessary; contrived incredulity
  • interjection colloquial Indicating affirmation, agreement.
  • interjection Indicating displeasure at another person's behaviour or statement.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in actual fact
  • adverb in accordance with truth or fact or reality
  • adverb in fact (used as intensifiers or sentence modifiers)
  • adverb used as intensifiers; `real' is sometimes used informally for `really'; `rattling' is informal

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

real +‎ -ly

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Examples

Comments

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  • Really? Really, you listed this as a word, really?

    September 9, 2007

  • Really. *arched eyebrow*

    September 9, 2007

  • Well, I rilly rilly like it! :oP

    September 9, 2007

  • Thing is, Really isn't so terrible. Really quite useful sometimes but so often really abused. I even do it myself sometimes. For shame.

    October 31, 2007

  • Do you really? ;-)

    October 31, 2007

  • See this map for American pronunciation.

    April 11, 2008

  • I have really rather a tendency to overuse this word -- not so much as an intensifier really than as an offset for the parts of my sentences.

    March 19, 2009