Technically means according to the strict, literal rules or facts of something, even if that's not how people usually think about it. When someone says “technically, a tomato is a fruit,” they're pointing out what's scientifically accurate, even though most of us think of tomatoes as vegetables when we're cooking.

You'll often hear technically when someone wants to make a precise distinction. If your friend says “I technically won the race,” they might mean they crossed the finish line first, but maybe you had to stop and tie your shoe, so it wasn't really a fair competition. Or if someone says “technically, we're not breaking any rules,” they usually mean they found a loophole: they're following the letter of the law but not its spirit.

The word comes up a lot when the strict facts differ from common understanding or when someone wants to be technically correct about something. A teacher might say, “Technically, your essay is late” if you turned it in one minute after the deadline, acknowledging that yes, by the exact rules it's late, but barely.

Sometimes people use technically to sound more precise or knowledgeable, like “technically speaking, this computer uses binary code.” It's a way of stepping back to look at the formal, official version of things rather than the casual, everyday view.