What is the meaning and usage of the word "very" in the following sentence?



XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations) is a language that, according to the very first sentence in the specification (found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/), is primarily designed for transforming one XML document into another.




Answer



Here, the word "very" is used to put additional emphasis on the word it modifies: "first". It's a shorthand for saying



XSLT is a language that, according to the specification — in fact, not just any place in the specification, but the first sentence of it —, is primarily designed for transforming one XML document into another.



Or:



XSLT is a language that is primarily designed for transforming one XML document into another — that's what the specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/ says right in its first sentence.



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