• enPR: trōōth, IPA: /tɹuːθ/

truth (uncountable)

1. True facts, genuine depiction or statements of reality.

   The truth is that our leaders knew a lot more than they were letting on.

2. Conformity to fact or reality; correctness, accuracy.

   There was some truth in his statement that he had no other choice.

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.

   • Alas! they had been friends in youth, / But whispering tongues can poison truth.1816

5. (obsolete) A pledge of loyalty or faith.
6. Conformity to rule; exactness; close correspondence with an example, mood, model, etc.

   • Ploughs, to go true, depend much on 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.

   • 1819 May, John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: Printed [by Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, OCLC 927360557 ↗, stanza 5, page 116 ↗:

     "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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.

• See Thesaurus:truth

• falsehood, falsity, lie, nonsense, drivel, untruth, half-truth

• French: vérité
• German: Wahrheit, Treue
• Italian: veritate, verità
• Portuguese: verdade
• Russian: ве́рность
• Spanish: verdad

• Portuguese: juramento

• French: vérité
• German: Wahrheit
• Italian: verità
• Portuguese: verdade
• Russian: пра́вда
• Spanish: verdad

• French: vérité
• German: Wahrheit
• Portuguese: verdade
• Russian: пра́вда
• Spanish: verdad

• French: vérité
• German: Wahrheit
• Italian: verità
• Portuguese: verdade, verdades, realidade
• Spanish: verdad

• French: vérité
• German: Wahrheit
• Portuguese: verdade
• Russian: и́стина
• Spanish: verdad

truth (truths, present participle truthing; past and past participle truthed)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To assert as true; to declare; to speak truthfully.
   • c. 1636 John Ford (dramatist), The Fancies Chaste and Noble

     Had they [the ancients] dreamt this, they would have truthed it heaven.

2. To make exact; to correct for inaccuracy.
3. (nonstandard, intransitive) To tell the truth.
   • 1966, Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"

     You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'