truth

Noun

1. True facts, genuine depiction or statements of reality.
   • The truth is that our leaders knew a lot more than they were letting on.
   • The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material. - 1831 December 27, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Beauty—Genius”, in H[enry] N[elson] C[oleridge], editor,...
   • 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 The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts.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...
2. Conformity to fact or reality; correctness, accuracy.
   • There was some truth in his statement that he had no other choice.
   • As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds. - 2012 January 5, Robert M. Pringle, “How to Be Manipulative”, in...
3. The state or quality of being true to someone or something.
   • Truth to one's own feelings is all-important in life.
4. Faithfulness, fidelity.
   • Alas! they had been friends in youth; / But whispering tongues can poison truth; […] - 1800, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Christabel. Part II.”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John...
5. A pledge of loyalty or faith.
6. Conformity to rule; exactness; close correspondence with an example, mood, model, etc.
   • Ploughs, […] to make them go true, […] depends much upon the truth of the ironwork. - 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys]...
   • 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. - 1840, Joseph...
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.
   • "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - 1819 May, John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas...
8. Something acknowledged to be true; a true statement or axiom.
   • Hunger and jealousy are just eternal truths of human existence.
   • It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III),...
9. Topness; the property of a truth quark.
10. In the game truth or dare, the choice to truthfully answer a question put forth.
    • When asked truth or dare, he picked truth.

Verb

1. To assert as true; to declare; to speak truthfully.
   • c. 1636 John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble Had they [the ancients] dreamt this, they would have truthed it heaven.
   • You were sitting with your family Thanksgiving, belly full of turkey and pie, surrounded by the love of your extended crime family, but your initial instinct was to truth a slur at Tim Walz? - 2025 December 1, Jon...
2. To make exact; to correct for inaccuracy.
   • 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...
   • 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. - 1990, Advanced Infrared Technology - Part 2, page cxxvi:
   • This database, which consisists of nearly 180,000 characters, was manually truthed. - 2003, Advances in Pattern Recognition ICAPR2003, →ISBN, page 67:
3. To tell the truth.
   • You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin' - 1966, Nancy Sinatra, These Boots Are Made for Walkin':

Wikipedia

truth