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"Undoubtedly, she was kind, but even her best friend could not say, with any truth, that she was physically attractive."

I understand the general meaning of this sentence, but what does "with any truth" mean?

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"say, with any truth, " means almost the same thing as "truthfully say".

In both cases, the verb "say" is being modified. "Truthfully" is an adverb doing the modification in "truthfully say". "with any truth" is a prepositional phrase doing the same thing in "say, with any truth,".

The subtle difference is that "cannot say, with any truth" suggests that there would be no amount of truth in the statement. None at all. Whereas "cannot say truthfully" could apply to a statement that has 10% truth, or 20% truth. So the use of "with any truth" in the sentence instead of "truthfully" suggests to the reader that the statement "she is physically attractive" is really, really, really not true.

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