Exactly means with nothing off — the same right down to the last detail. The bus left at exactly six; that is exactly what I meant.
It sharpens whatever it stands next to: exactly the same, exactly here, exactly one hundred, exactly twice as far. On its own it is a whole answer meaning yes, that is right, and people say it to show you have read them correctly. Not exactly is the polite refusal, a soft no wearing the clothes of a maybe. Inside a question it presses for detail: what exactly did she say? And it is the plainest way to demand accuracy — do exactly as I told you, with no improvising.
1adverbexactlyWith complete accuracy, in every detail.~96%
“The copy matched the original exactly.”
synonyms: accurately
2adverbaloneUsed alone to say that something is completely right.~2%
“'So he never called back?' 'Exactly.'”
3adverbquestionUsed in a question to press for detail.~2%
“What exactly are you asking me to do?”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: precisely
There is no journey here: exactly is the adjective exact with the ordinary adverb ending -ly bolted on the back. Whatever adventures the word had, it had them as exact, long before English added the ending.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eǵ-
Middle English
exact
Latin
exāctus
English
exact
English, today
exactly
Built from
From exact + -ly. exact comes from Latin exāctus (the verb via Middle English exact), perfect passive participle of exigō (“demand, claim as due; measure by a standard, weigh, test”), from ex (“out”) + agō (“drive”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA