Verray

Part of speech: adjective, adverb

Definitions

1. In a manner that is absolutely true or authentic, without doubt or deception
2. In reality or in actual fact, with complete sincerity and honesty
3. With genuine truth and certainty, not falsely or in pretense

Etymology: The spelling "verray" is how Middle English writers, Chaucer included, wrote the word we now spell "very." Chaucer's Prologue describes a knight as "a verray, parfit gentil knyght," and there "verray" means true or genuine, a sense it kept for centuries. Its source was Old French "verai," meaning true, which came from Late Latin "veracus" and ultimately from Latin "verax," "truthful." The modern intensifier sense developed from that older meaning. "The very man" once meant the actual, precisely identical man, and "very" gradually shifted from marking something as genuine to marking it as exact, and then as extreme. Modern English kept the old sense in phrases like "the very thing," while the intensifier took over most other uses.