in fact
Prepositional phrase
  1. (legal) Resulting from the actions of parties.
  2. (modal) Actually, in truth.
    People think tomatoes are vegetables, but, in fact, they are fruits.
    • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546 ↗; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], OCLC 2666860 ↗, page 0016 ↗:
      A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid thirty-seven shillings for the chair.
    • 2015 August 8, Bob Holmes, Ocean hills yield secret ecosystems, New Scientist, Issue 3033 ↗, page 14,
      We tend to think of the seafloor a few kilometres down as a flat plain. In fact, about two-thirds of this “abyssal” seabed is made up of gentle rolling hills a few hundred metres high, says Jennifer Durden at the University of Southampton, UK.
Synonyms Translations
  • French: en fait
  • German: tatsächlich, in Wirklichkeit
  • Italian: di fatto, in realtà
  • Portuguese: na verdade
  • Russian: вообще́-то
  • Spanish: de hecho



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