student asking question

What's this line mean?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Here, "not really" means "not truly," or not exactly the way it was. In context, they're saying that it might somewhat appear like things are normal, but they aren't in fact, or truly, the same. Ex: He seemed happy, but he wasn't really happy. He was, in fact, upset. Ex: This isn't really a real lion. It's just a toy one.

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