truth

English

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Alternative forms

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
  • enPR: trōōth, IPA(key): /tɹuːθ/
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  • Rhymes: -uːθ

Noun

truth (usually uncountable, plural truths)

  1. 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, 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, 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 The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts.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”.
  2. 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.
  3. The state or quality of being true to someone or something.
    Truth to one's own feelings is all-important in life.
  4. (archaic) Faithfulness, fidelity.
  5. (obsolete) A pledge of loyalty or faith.
  6. 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. […], 2nd edition, London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], published 1708, →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.
  7. 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.
  8. (countable) Something acknowledged to be true; a true statement or axiom.
    Hunger and jealousy are just eternal truths of human existence.
  9. (physics, dated) Topness; the property of a truth quark.
  10. (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

Antonyms

Derived terms

Translations
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Verb

truth (third-person singular simple present truths, present participle truthing, simple past and past participle truthed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To assert as true; to declare; to speak truthfully.
  2. 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.
  3. (nonstandard, intransitive) To tell the truth.
    • 1966, Nancy Sinatra, These Boots Are Made for Walkin':
      You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'

See also

References

Anagrams
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