Other forms: truths
The truth is what actually happened, whether or not it suits anybody. The camera on the corner will show who went through the red light, and that is the end of the argument.
Truth is uncountable when you mean the thing itself: tell the truth, the whole truth, there is no truth in the rumour. In the plural it becomes countable and means separate facts that people accept: home truths, hard truths, the truths a family talks around at Christmas. It goes with tell, know, face, hide and admit, and takes the adjectives whole, plain, awful and simple. In truth means when you look at it honestly, and the moment of truth is the point where the thing is finally tested. The adjective is true, the opposite is a lie, and truthful describes a person who tells the truth rather than a statement that happens to be correct.
1nountruthWhat is actually the case, as against what is invented or hoped for.~9%
“It took three days for the truth to come out.”
2nounqualityThe quality of being true; accuracy.~73%
“There is not a word of truth in the whole article.”
3nounfactA fact or principle that people accept as true.~18%
“The film tells a few uncomfortable truths about the industry.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 11 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Truth is true with an old ending stuck on it, the -th that turns an adjective into the name of its quality, the same one behind warmth, length and depth. It has a twin, troth, which is the same word taken a slightly different way and survives in betrothed and in to plight one's troth, where the truth at stake is a promise kept. Norwegian trygd and Icelandic tryggð, meaning trustworthiness and loyalty, are cousins of it.
Middle English
trouthe
English, today
truth
From Middle English trouthe. by surface analysis, true + -th. a doublet of troth. Cognate with Norwegian trygd (“trustworthiness, security, insurance”), Icelandic tryggð (“loyalty, fidelity”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA