truthy

English

Etymology

From truth +‎ -y. In colloquial sense, back-formation from truthiness.

Pronunciation

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

Adjective

truthy (comparative truthier, superlative truthiest)

1. (obsolete) Faithful; true. [19th c.]

   Synonyms: faithful, honest

   • 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.]

   Synonyms: truthlike, truthful, truthsome, veridical

   • 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. (programming) Evaluating to true in a Boolean context.

   Antonym: falsy

   • 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:

     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, 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, 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.

Derived terms

• truthiness

See also

• facty

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.