Other forms: verified, verifying, verifies
To verify something is to check it against the facts until you know it is true. Typing in the code they texted you to verify your number, holding a note up to the light, ringing the school to verify that the letter really came from them.
Verify is the formal word; in the kitchen you would say check. It takes a that-clause as easily as an object: verify that the account is closed, verify the address, verify her identity. The noun is verification and the adjective is verified — a verified account, a verified purchase. Verify and confirm are close but not the same: a hotel confirms your booking because it says so, while you verify a booking by going and looking at the evidence. Save it for the moments when proof, not reassurance, is the point.
1verbverifyTo check that something is true by testing it against evidence.
“The bank will verify your address before opening the account.”
2verblogicTo show by evidence that a claim, theory or prediction holds.
“A second experiment will verify the result.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: confirm, check
Medieval Latin vērificō meant 'make true', built from vērus, 'true', and faciō, 'do, make'. Old French turned it into verifier and English took it from there. To verify is not to believe something — it is to do the work that makes it stand as true.
Proto-Indo-European
*weh₁-
Latin
vērus — true
Old French
verifier
English, today
verify
Built from
From Old French verifier (French: vérifier), from Medieval Latin - vērificō (“make true”), from Latin vērus (“true”) + faciō (“do, make”); see -fy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA