truth

Senses through time

1. Old English

   Faith kept between persons. Fidelity, loyalty, and a pledge or covenant. Also veracity, already named, but the weight is on faith kept.¹

   Established

2. Late 12c.

   troth splits off as a phonetic variant and keeps the pledge. “Plight one’s troth.” The pledge sense survives in that doublet to this day.³

   Established

3. Mid-14c.

   Something true. A true statement. The word begins to name what is said, not only the faith that binds the saying.¹

   Established

4. Late 14c.

   Righteousness, true religious doctrine, and virtuous conduct. In the same century the pledged word is still the sense Chaucer sets highest. The line is read below. It is not re-glossed here.^1,8

   Established

5. 1530s

   “Truth!” as an exclamation of assent.¹

   Established

6. 1560s

   Accuracy, correctness, conformity of thought with fact. This is the factual sense most readers now assume came first. It comes last of the core senses.¹

   Established

7. Exactness

   Conformity to rule, and exactness, as in machining and Whitworth’s true planes (1840). Compare true north (1540s) and an aim that is true, straight to the target (1801). One line of work. It does not replace the noun.^6,2

   Established

8. Later compounds

   truth-serum in 1925. truth squad in 1952. Compounds only. They do not replace the noun.¹

   Established

Semantic change

• soð

  the takeover

  truth

  The native word for being was sooth, Old English soð. The native word for faith kept between persons was treowð. English gave the work of what-is to the word for keeping faith. soð is from Proto-Germanic *santhaz, from PIE *hes-ont-, “being,” present participle of *es-, “to be.” That reconstruction is Probable. Latin sunt, “they are,” and German sind sit on the same verb. The displacement is Established: sooth was common until the mid-17th century, then obsolete, except as Walter Scott’s archaism and in forsooth and soothsayer. Swedish sann and Danish sand are cousins of sooth, not of treowð. The pledge did not die. It stayed in troth, and in the marriage vow. Established^4,1,3

• a name proposed for the top quark

  1970s

  top

  Truth was a proposed name for the top quark, paired with beauty for bottom, before Haim Harari’s top and bottom (1975) won. Usage history. Probable. A specialized fork. It does not lead this plate, and it is not the origin of the English noun. Probable¹⁴

Cognates and neighbors

Resemblance is not lineage. Translation is not descent.

• Old Frisian

  triuwi²

  A cousin of the adjective. Loyalty, not the later English fact-sense.

  Cognate

• Dutch

  getrouw²

  Loyal. Also trouw. The cousin kept faith.

  Cognate

• Old High German

  gatriuwu²

  A cousin of the adjective. Modern German treu is “loyal.” That cousin did not move to conformity with fact.

  Cognate

• Old Norse

  tryggr²

  Faithful. A cousin. Danish tryg is “safe, secure.” The cousin’s sense went toward safety.

  Cognate

• Gothic

  triggws²

  True, faithful. A cousin.

  Cognate

• Swedish

  sann⁴

  True. A cognate of sooth, the displaced being-word. Not a cousin of treowð.

  Cognate

• Danish

  sand⁴

  True. A cognate of sooth. Danish tryg, above, is the other family.

  Cognate

• Welsh

  derw²

  True. The oak is derwen. On the *deru- list. Proposed as family, not as the descent of the English noun.

  Cognate

• Old Irish

  derb²

  Sure. On the same proposed family.

  Cognate

• Greek

  δρῦς²

  Oak. On the *deru- list. Not a parent of truth.

  Cognate

• Sanskrit

  dru²

  Tree. On the *deru- list. The wood is the proposed company of the root, not a source text.

  Cognate

• Latin

  robur⁶

  Red oak. robustus is “tough,” from that noun. Wiktionary compares the path firm wood to firm faith. Proposed. Not proof that truth is a tree.

  Cognate

• Latin

  veritas⁵

  verity, late 14c., from Old French verite, from Latin veritatem, accusative of veritas, from verus, “true,” from PIE *were-o-, “true, trustworthy.” Cousins include very, verdict, verify, German wahr, Dutch waar. A rival word for the same work. Not a cognate of truth. Latin built its noun on “trustworthy.” English built its on “faithful.” Both are words about reliance.

  Translation equivalent

• Greek

  ἀλήθεια⁷

  Truth, reality, from ἀληθής, “true.” Beekes: ἀ- “un-” plus *λῆθος, “concealment,” the root of λανθάνω, “I am hidden,” with Doric λᾶθος attested only as a synonym of λήθη, “oblivion.” The original but unattested meaning of the adjective was “uncovered, unconcealed.” Probable as Beekes’s reconstruction. Philosophical readings of ἀλήθεια as “unconcealment” are Interpretation, and they stay off this plate. λήθη, oblivion, is a quiet door toward the memory plate. That plate is not reopened here.

  Translation equivalent

Read the text

• Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe.⁸

  The Franklin’s Tale, line V.1479 in the Riverside numbering. Spoken by Arveragus, the knight, in The Franklin’s Tale. Harvard’s interlinear gloss: “One’s pledged word is the highest thing that one may keep.” Here trouthe is the pledged word, not a matching of fact.

  Primary source

• and thereto I plyght the my trouthe⁹

  The vernacular vow in Sarum use. The Book of Common Prayer, 1549 onward, and the 1662 standard text, reads “and thereto I plight thee my troth.” The pledge sense survives in troth.

• And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.¹⁰

  John 18:38, in the same 1611 text: “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?” Reception only. Not etymology.

• Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.¹

  Quoted in Etymonline, s.v. truth, from Areopagitica. The brackets are Etymonline’s.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged.⁶

  The opening line of Pride and Prejudice. The ironic “truth” as a general maxim. One line. Not a theory of the word.

• whispering tongues can poison truth⁶

  Wiktionary’s citation from Christabel for the archaic sense “faithfulness.” The old fidelity sense is still alive in Romantic English.

• Beauty is truth, truth beauty.^11,12

  In the Lamia volume, 1820. The line is from Ode on a Grecian Urn. The live Exegesis door reads it in both the 1819 Annals printing and the 1820 Lamia printing. This plate does not copy that door’s text or its apparatus, and it does not re-read the poem.

  Primary source

Follow the number

Numerical analysis comes after language. Historical systems and modern English mappings are labeled. Misses are kept. Further calculation lives at CIPHER.

Ask the next question

Ask the next question

• When an Old English speaker said treowð they meant faith kept between persons; by the 1560s truth meant conformity of thought with fact. What did English gain, and what did it lose, when the word for keeping faith took over the work of sooth, the word for being?
• If true and tree share a root meaning “firm, solid, steadfast,” as Watkins and Wiktionary both reconstruct, is truth something that holds rather than something that matches, and which senses on this plate (pledge, fact, exactness, aim) would survive if that link failed?
• Chaucer’s knight says “Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe”; Elon writes “Only truth understands the universe.” Is truth a thing you keep or a thing you find?

Neighbors

• beauty
• love
• knowledge
• understand
• question
• memory

• Exegesis, Ode on a Grecian Urn: The live door for the line. Not this etymology. Its text is not copied.
• CIPHER: Owns the methods. LEXIS only records the labeled misses.

Notes