Sentence:  Even Rector himself was prey to this spirit of competition and he knew it , not for a more exalted office in the hierarchy of the church - his ambitions for the bishopry had died <WSD>very</WSD> early in his career - but for the one clear victory he had talked about to the colonel . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  used as intensifiers; `real' is sometimes used informally for `really'; `rattling' is informal