What is the primary sense of “evidently”? [closed]

Question

I have just looked in three dictionaries (American Heritage, Canadian Oxford & OED) for the word evidently and all three give "obviously, clearly" as the primary definition, whereas "it would appear that" (whole-sentence qualifier) and "apparently" are provided as the secondary definition. But I just cannot think of any (modern) context in which the so-called primary definition truly applies; it always means "apparently, seemingly" as far as I am concerned.
Take the sentence, "The two men evidently knew each other." For me, this means unambiguously that the two men appeared (based on some evidence) to know each other or, possibly, that it had been reported to me that they knew each other (i.e., sense of "apparently"). If one's intended meaning were that they manifestly, clearly, obviously knew each other, then one of those adverbs would have to be used -- not evidently .
Am I right or am I right? No, seriously: am I missing something? Can anyone think of a modern-usage context (OED's most recent example is 1860!) in which the primary sense of "evident" actually transfers adverbially without alteration? I did an online search and found that the dictionary websites, like the hard-copy dictionaries, usually give a usage example for the secondary meaning, but NOT for the primary one... evidently, they think the primary meaning should be evident (ha ha).

Answer 1

To strictly answer your question and offer a modern usage of evidently that means obviously or clearly:

She already knew his name, number, address and mother's maiden name!

They evidently knew each other.

You could take this usage to also mean apparently but that just shows why the word has these two nuances. Inflection plays a large part, here, and in the above example it helps to read the second sentence snobbishly: "They obviously knew each other."