at heart
C2 used to say what someone is really like:
He had dozens of friends, but he was a private person at heart.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
True, real, false, and unreal
- actual
- actuality
- actually
- all that glitters is not gold idiom
- apocryphal
- faithful
- false
- falsely
- fictional
- fictitious
- glitter
- gritty
- nominal
- pretend
- proper
- properly
- properly speaking idiom
- pukka
- realistic
- well founded
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