English
true
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /tɹuː/
  • (America) enPR: trōō IPA: /tɹu/, [t͡ʃɹü]
  • (archaic) IPA: /tɹjuː/
  • (now dialectal) IPA: /tɹɪʊ̯/
Adjective

true (comparative truer, superlative truest)

  1. (of a statement) Conforming to the actual state of reality or fact; factually correct.
    This is a true story.
  2. Conforming to a rule or pattern; exact; accurate.
    a true copy;   a true likeness of the original
    • 1820, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume (please specify ), Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], OCLC 230694662 ↗:
  3. (logic) Of the state in Boolean logic that indicates an affirmative or positive result.
    "A and B" is true if and only if "A" is true and "B" is true.
  4. Loyal, faithful.
    He’s turned out to be a true friend.
  5. Genuine; legitimate.
    This is true Parmesan cheese.
    The true king has returned!
  6. Used in the designation of group of species, or sometimes a single species, to indicate that it belongs to the clade its common name (which may be more broadly scoped in common speech) is restricted to in technical speech, or to distinguish it from a similar species, the latter of which may be called false.
    true sparrows (Passer)
    true spiders
    true blusher (Amanita rubescens, as distinguished from the false blusher, Amanita pantherina)
  7. (of an, aim or missile in archery, shooting, golf etc.) Accurate; following a path toward the target.
  8. (chiefly, probability) Fair, unbiased, not loaded.
    • 1990, William W. S. Wei, Time Series Analysis, ISBN 0201159112, page 8:
      Let Z_t be twice the value of a true die shown on the t-th toss.
    • 2006, Judith A. Baer, Leslie Friedman Goldstein, The Constitutional and Legal Rights of Women: Cases in Law and Social Change ISBN 9781933220222
      In fact, few profit margins can be predicted with such reliability as those provided by a true roulette wheel or other game of chance.
    • 2012, Peter Sprent, Applied Nonparametric Statistical Methods, Springer Science & Business Media ISBN 9789400912236, page 5
      We do not reject, because 9 heads and 3 tails is in a set of reasonably likely results when we toss a true coin.
  9. (Of a literary genre) based on actual historical events.
    true crimetrue romance
Antonyms Related terms Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations
Adverb

true (not comparable)

  1. (of shooting, throwing etc) Accurately.
    this gun shoots true
Noun

true

  1. (uncountable) The state of being in alignment.
    • 1904, Lester Gray French, Machinery, Volume 10:
      Some toolmakers are very careless when drilling the first hole through work that is to be bored, claiming that if the drilled hole comes out of true somewhat it can be brought true with the boring tool.
    • 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald, O Russet Witch! in Tales of the Jazz Age:
      She clapped her hands happily, and he thought how pretty she was really, that is, the upper part of her face—from the bridge of the nose down she was somewhat out of true.
    • 1988, Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free, Baen Publishing, ISBN 0-671-65398-9, page 96:
      The crate shifted on its pallet, out of sync now. As the lift withdrew, the crate skidded with it, dragged by friction and gravity, skewing farther and farther from true.
  2. (uncountable, obsolete) Truth.
  3. (countable, obsolete) A pledge or truce.
Verb

true (trues, present participle trueing; past and past participle trued)

  1. To straighten.
    He trued the spokes of the bicycle wheel.
  2. To make even, level, symmetrical, or accurate, align; adjust.
    We spent all night truing up the report.
Translations
TRUE
Adjective

true (not comparable)

  1. (electronics) one of two states of a Boolean variable; logic 1.
True
Proper noun
  1. Surname


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