You can picture 'truly' as the word you put in front of something to say: this is not just close to real, it is all the way real. 'She was truly happy' means there is no gap between the word 'happy' and what was actually inside her.
From the word’s history
'Truly' is 'true' + '-ly'. 'True' goes back to Old English treowe 'faithful, steadfast', from a Proto-Germanic root meaning 'having good faith' (the same root family as 'trust' and 'tree' — the idea of being as steadfast as an oak). So 'truly' first meant 'in a faithful, steadfast way', and only later 'in a way that matches the facts' — which is why the word still stretches across both being faithful in the heart (sincerely) and being faithful to the facts (accurately).
truly 是 true 加上 -ly。true 來自古英語 treowe「忠實、堅定」，源自原始日耳曼語一個「懷有誠信」的字根——和 trust（信任）、tree（樹）同一族，背後的意象比較像「像橡樹一樣穩固不移」。所以 truly 最早是「以忠實、堅定的方式」，後來才變成「符合事實地」。這條線索也解釋了為什麼這個字能同時橫跨「對內心忠實」（真心地）和「對事實忠實」（確切地）。
etymonline.com/word/true ; grammarphobia.com/blog/2018/05/tree-true.html (true < OE treowe 'faithful', PIE *deru- 'be firm, steadfast')
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原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
trulyadv/ˈtɹuːli/
- 1
mannerIn accordance with the facts; truthfully, accurately.
- He adds, very truly, that what was fatal to such philosophies as his was not Christianity but the Copernican theory.
- 2
Honestly, genuinely, in fact, really.
- That is truly all I know.
- Truly, that is all I know.
- 3
Very.
- You are truly silly.
- I’m distantly related to the truly great writer, Chaim Potok, which for a magazine editor seems like a good thing.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。