Other forms: trusted, trusts, trusting
Trust is the quiet certainty that someone will not let you down. Handing your spare key to a neighbour; leaving your bag at a table while you go to the counter.
The verb takes several shapes: you trust someone, you trust someone with the keys, you trust them to lock up. In formal letters it softens to something milder - I trust you had a good journey is closer to I hope than to I believe. In money and law a trust is an arrangement where one person holds property for another, which is where held in trust comes from, and in Britain an NHS trust is the body that runs a group of hospitals. Trust is slow to build and quick to break, so the verbs that gather round it are earn, win, betray and lose. Take something on trust means accept it without proof, on the strength of who told you.
1nountrustFirm belief that someone is honest and will do what they said.~20%
“It took years to build that kind of trust between the two families.”
synonyms: confidence, faith
2nounarrangementAn arrangement in which one person holds money or property for the benefit of another.~39%
“The cottage was left in trust for the grandchildren.”
3nounorganisationAn organisation that manages property or services on behalf of others.~10%
“The trust that runs the hospital has three sites across the county.”
4verbbelieveTo believe that someone is honest and reliable.~29%
“I trust her with the accounts more than I trust myself.”
5verbhopeTo hope or assume, in polite or formal speech.~2%
“I trust the room was comfortable enough.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 11 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Trust was long thought to be a Norse import, from traust, but the vowel does not fit, so scholars now take it as an unrecorded Old English word of the same family, showing up in Middle English as trust, meaning trust and protection. The Proto-Indo-European root behind it, *deru-, meant firm, hard, solid - trust is the word for someone who does not give way when you lean on them. The German cousin Trost drifted elsewhere and means comfort.
Proto-Indo-European
*deru- — be firm, hard, solid
Old English
*trust
Middle English
trust — trust, protection
English, today
trust
From Middle English trust (“trust, protection”). Long considered a borrowing from Old Norse traust (“confidence, help, protection”), from Proto-Germanic traustą, but the root vocalism is incompatible, so trust has come to be considered a reflex of an unattested Old English trust, from a rare zero-grade Proto-Germanic variant of the same root also attested in Middle High German getrüste (“host”). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European deru- (“be firm, hard, solid”). 2 Cognate with stq Traast (“comfort, solace”), West Frisian treast (“comfort, consolation, solace”), Dutch troost (“comfort, consolation”), German Trost (“comfort, consolation”), Low German Troost (“comfort, consolation”), lb Trouscht (“consolation”), Danish trøst (“comfort, solace”), Icelandic traust (“faith, trust; confidence”), Norwegian Nynorsk trøst, trøyst (“consolation”), Swedish tröst (“comfort, consolation”), Gothic 𐍄𐍂𐌰𐌿𐍃𐍄𐌹 (“covenant, pact”). a doublet of tryst. More at true, tree.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA