in fact

From fact (“deed, action”) (now obsolete, except in law). Perhaps ultimately a calque of French en fait.

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in fact

1. (law) Resulting from the actions of parties.

   Coordinate terms: in law; de jure

2. (modal) Actually; in truth; de facto.

   Synonyms: as a matter of fact, in actuality; see also Thesaurus:actually

   People think he's rich, but in fact he's nearly penniless.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter III, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

   • 1913, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., , , →OCLC, 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.

   • 1998, Donald N. Clark, “Sino-Korean tributary relations under the Ming”, in Denis Twitchett, Frederick W. Mote, editors, The Cambridge History of China‎, volume 8, number 2, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 286:

     Menggetimur (d. 1433),¹⁸ chief of the Odoli subtribe of the Chien-chou Jurchen, had in fact moved into Korea south of the Tumen River. Because he offered tribute to the Choson court and had encamped at Hoeryŏng (Chinese: Hui-ning), the Koreans regarded him as their vassal.

   • 2015 August 8, Bob Holmes, “Ocean hills yield secret ecosystems”, in New Scientist‎, number 3033, archived from the original on 5 September 2015, 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.

3. Moreover.

   Synonym: as a matter of fact

   I don't have the time or patience to deal with him. In fact, I barely even have time for being here at all.