truthy

English

Etymology

From truth +‎ -y. In colloquial sense, after truthiness.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹuːθi/
• Rhymes: -uːθi

Adjective

truthy (comparative truthier, superlative truthiest)

1. (obsolete) Faithful; true. [19th c.]
   • c. 1800, J. H. Colls, Theodore:

     You […] are afraid Theodore your sweetheart shouldn't prove truthy.

2. (US, colloquial) Only superficially true; that is asserted or felt instinctively to be true, with no recourse to facts. [from 21st c.]
   • 2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin 2012, p. 595:

     Historians today point out that each of these ringing assertions was, at best, truthy.

3. (computing, programming) Evaluating to true in a Boolean context.
   • 2012, David Flanagan, JavaScript Pocket Reference, page 40:

     In JavaScript, any expression or statement that expects a boolean value will work with a truthy or falsy value, so the fact that && does not always evaluate to true or false does not cause practical problems.

   • 2013, Dan Wellman, Jquery Hotshot, ISBN 1849519110:

     In JavaScript, as well as the true or false Boolean values, other types of variables can be said to be truthy or falsey.

   • 2014, Eric T. Freeman & ‎Elisabeth Robson, Head First JavaScript Programming: A Brain-Friendly Guide, ISBN 1449340113, page 292:

     To remember which values are truthy and which are falsey, just memorize the five falsey values - undefined, null, 0, "" and NaN -- and remember that everything else is truthy.

   • 2015, Daniel Higginbotham, Clojure for the Brave and True, ISBN 1593277237, page 40:

     Clojure uses the Boolean operators or and and. or returns either the first truthy value or the last value, and returns the first falsey value or, if no values are falsey, the last truthy value.

Synonyms

• faithful, honest
• truthlike, truthful, truthsome, veridical

Antonyms

• (computing): falsy

Derived terms

• truthiness

See also

• facty

References

• James A. H. Murray [et al.], editor (1884–1928) A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, OCLC 15566697; and The Oxford English Dictionary; being a Corrected Re-issue with an Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (the First Supplement), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933, OCLC 2748467.