“In the first installment, really was one of many English words meaning “truth” that came to mean very—such as very itself, which came from the French word for true, vrai (verrai in the late thirteenth century). Very is the well-worn version of verily just as “rilly” is what happens to really with heavy use. Truly was another example, of course, with true having undergone the same transformation as verrai a couple of centuries earlier.”