One way to picture 'moderately': a slider that could be pushed all the way to the end, held on purpose somewhere in the middle. Nothing is switched off, and nothing is pushed to the limit. Whatever the slider measures — how much you eat, how spicy the soup is, how much a hotel costs — the word says the value sits between the two ends, and that the middle is where it was meant to stay.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary derives 'moderately' from Middle English, equal to 'moderate' + '-ly'. 'Moderate' already carries the idea of staying inside limits, and the '-ly' ending turns that idea into a description of how much, or of how something is done.
Wiktionary 說 moderately 來自中古英語，等於 moderate 加上 -ly。moderate 本身帶著「留在合理範圍、不走極端」，加上 -ly 之後，那個「中間」就被拿來描述程度，或描述一件事怎麼做。
Wiktionary via kaikki (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1115476612:9235): "From Middle English moderately... equivalent to moderate + -ly."
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