truth
English
Alternative forms
- trewth (obsolete)
Etymology
From Middle English trouthe, truthe, trewthe, treowthe, from Old English trēowþ, trīewþ (“truth, veracity, faith, fidelity, loyalty, honour, pledge, covenant”), from Proto-Germanic *triwwiþō (“promise, covenant, contract”), from Proto-Indo-European *drū- (“tree”), from Proto-Indo-European *deru- (“firm, solid”), equivalent to true + -th. Cognate with Norwegian trygd (“trustworthiness, security, insurance”), Icelandic tryggð (“loyalty, fidelity”).
Pronunciation
Noun
truth (usually uncountable, plural truths)
- True facts, genuine depiction or statements of reality.
- The truth is that our leaders knew a lot more than they were letting on.
- 1835, Samuel Taylor Coleridge with Henry Nelson Coleridge, quoting Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge[1], volume II, →ISBN, page 19:
- The truth depends on, or is only arrived at by, a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material.
- 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist[2], volume 411, number 8892, archived from the original on 4 November 2018:
- The truth is that [Isaac] Newton was very much a product of his time. The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts. Instead “he was the last of the magicians”.
- Conformity to fact or reality; correctness, accuracy.
- There was some truth in his statement that he had no other choice.
- 2012 January, Robert M. Pringle, “How to Be Manipulative”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 31:
- As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds.
- The state or quality of being true to someone or something.
- Truth to one's own feelings is all-important in life.
- (archaic) Faithfulness, fidelity.
- 1800, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Christabel. Part II.”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, page 32:
- Alas! they had been friends in youth; / But whispering tongues can poison truth; […]
- (obsolete) A pledge of loyalty or faith.
- Conformity to rule; exactness; close correspondence with an example, mood, model, etc.
- 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC:
- Ploughs, […] to make them go true, […] depends much upon the truth of the ironwork.
- 1840, Joseph Whitworth, "A Paper on Plane Metallic Surfaces or True Planes":
- The process of grinding is, in fact, regarded as indispensable wherever truth is required, yet that of scraping is calculated to produce a higher degree of truth than has ever been attained by grinding.
- That which is real, in a deeper sense; spiritual or ‘genuine’ reality.
- The truth is what is.
- Alcoholism and redemption led me finally to truth.
- 1819 May, John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, →OCLC, stanza 5, page 116:
- "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- (countable) Something acknowledged to be true; a true statement or axiom.
- Hunger and jealousy are just eternal truths of human existence.
- 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
- It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
- (physics, dated) Topness; the property of a truth quark.
- (games) In the game truth or dare, the choice to truthfully answer a question put forth.
- When asked truth or dare, he picked truth.
Synonyms
- See Thesaurus:truth
Antonyms
Derived terms
- ain't that the truth
- bend the truth
- countertruth
- economical with the truth
- first truth
- God's honest truth
- God's truth
- Gospel truth
- grain of truth
- ground truth
- half-truth
- hard truth
- home truth
- if truth be told
- in truth
- in wine, there is truth
- it's the truth, Ruth
- kernel of truth
- live one's truth
- moment of truth
- National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
- nugget of truth
- of a truth
- post-truth
- ring of truth
- semitruth
- speak truth to power
- stretch the truth
- tell the truth
- tell-truth
- tell you the truth
- trickle truth
- truth be told
- truth bomb
- truth drug
- truthen
- trutherism
- truthful
- truth function
- truthiness
- truth is stranger than fiction
- truthless
- truthlike
- truth or dare
- truth quark
- truth quotient
- truth serum
- truth squad
- truth table
- truth to tell
- truth tree
- truth value
- truth will out
- truthy
- vacuous truth
Related terms
Translations
state or quality of being true to someone or something
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pledge of loyalty or faith
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conformity to fact or reality
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true facts
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that which is real
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something acknowledged to be true
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Verb
truth (third-person singular simple present truths, present participle truthing, simple past and past participle truthed)
- (obsolete, transitive) To assert as true; to declare; to speak truthfully.
- c. 1636 John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble
- Had they [the ancients] dreamt this, they would have truthed it heaven.
- c. 1636 John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble
- To make exact; to correct for inaccuracy.
- 1974, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, page 226:
- A concentrated region of the agricultural test area was intensively ground truthed, not only to identify the crop types, but equally important, also to begin to determine the parameters controlling the radar energy reflected from a crop type at a particular stage of growth.
- 1990, Advanced Infrared Technology - Part 2, page cxxvi:
- As is shown in this table, APG images in the validation subset were only truthed with box models, and the 29P images in this subset were never truthed at all.
- 2003, Advances in Pattern Recognition ICAPR2003, →ISBN, page 67:
- This database, which consisists of nearly 180,000 characters, was manually truthed.
- (nonstandard, intransitive) To tell the truth.
- 1966, Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"
- You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'
- 1966, Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"
See also
References
- “truth”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- truth in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
- “truth”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms suffixed with -th
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/uːθ
- Rhymes:English/uːθ/1 syllable
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with archaic senses
- English terms with obsolete senses
- en:Physics
- English dated terms
- en:Games
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
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- English intransitive verbs