# virtually

Pronunciation: say "VUR-choo-uh-lee" US /ˈvɝt͡ʃuəli/, AUS /ˈvɜːt͡ʃʉəli/; UK say "VUR-chuu-uh-lee" /ˈvɜːt͡ʃʊəli/

## Adverb

1. To a degree that is almost, but not quite, complete or exact.
   - Simple: Very close to being true, but not quite.
   - _The storm knocked out power to virtually every home on the island._
   - _With a week to go, the two candidates are virtually tied in the polls._
2. By means of computers, or online rather than in the physical world.
   - Simple: Done using a computer or over the internet.
   - _Because of the snowstorm, the school board met virtually on Tuesday night._
   - _Visitors can now tour the museum virtually, clicking through each gallery from home._
3. In essence or in the way it works, though not in strict fact or in any formal or technical sense.
   - Simple: Acting like something in every way that matters, but not really or officially that thing.
   - _He was never formally adopted, but after ten years in their home he is virtually a son to them._
   - _The two firms are still legally separate, but they virtually operate as one company, sharing offices and staff._
4. Used before a property of a group to say that some subgroup of finite index has that property.
   - Simple: In math, said of a group when a part of it, a fixed fraction of the whole, has some property.
   - _Every finitely generated abelian group is virtually free abelian._
   - _Because the group contains a copy of ℤ with finite index, it is virtually cyclic._
5. Used before a property of a space to say that some covering space of finite degree has that property.
   - Simple: In advanced math, said of a space that gains a property once unwrapped into a limited number of copies.
   - _Every non-orientable manifold is virtually orientable, since its orientation double cover is orientable._
   - _It is now known that every closed hyperbolic 3-manifold is virtually Haken._

## Origin

From Middle English vertually, equivalent to virtual + -ly.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/virtually (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).