truth
/truːθ
/- Big business acts on a different scale of honesty, morality and truth to we mere mortals.
- It will say that truth and honesty were the basic disciplines of scientists such as Jones.
- My research showed that this stereotype once had some truth but is now no longer true.
Synonyms
- Madness is full of mischief and when the truth becomes distorted, reality has no meaning.
- They cannot deny facts and the truth but of course they will never admit they are wrong.
- The news is uncertain, the details clouded and vague, and the truth behind the fact is elusive.
Synonyms
- One of the great accepted truths which shapes our existence is the fact that nothing lasts forever.
- You face truths and facts in personal and professional situations to gain clarity.
- We western liberals take it as an article of faith that facts and truths trump everything.
Synonyms
Phrases
in truth
to tell (you) the truth
truth in sentencing
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
Origin
Old English trīewth, trēowth 'faithfulness, constancy' (see true, -th2).
This comes from the same root as true and also originally suggested qualities of faithfulness and loyalty. Lord Byron was the first to popularize truth is stranger than fiction, in his poem Don Juan in 1823. The first verifiable instance of truth is the first casualty of war is an epigraph by the British politician Arthur Ponsonby in 1918: ‘When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.’ One of the adages of the Dutch humanist and scholar Erasmus (c.1466–1536), writing in Latin, was in vino veritas, translated as there is truth in wine, and this English version has continued in use, though the Latin form is probably more familiar. The idea itself goes back to Greek, and is attributed to the poet Alcaeus of the 6th century bc. See also plight