veracity

Etymology

It is borrowed from French véracité or Medieval Latin vērācitās (“truthfulness”),^[2][3][4][5] from Latin vērāx (“truthful, speaking truly”),^[2][6][3] from vērus (“true, real”).^[2][7][8] Etymonline takes it from French,^[7] the American Heritage Dictionary and Collins from Medieval Latin,^[6][9] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged from New Latin;^[10] Barnhart regards it as formed in English from the Latin adjective and -ity.^[8] The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *were-o- (“true, trustworthy”).^[7][6] The French noun has counterparts in Italian veracità, Spanish veracidad and Portuguese veracidade.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The habit of speaking the truth, truthfulness: 1623, in Cockeram's English Dictionarie.^[2][8] Etymonline dates it to the 1620s, of persons,^[7] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to about 1623.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word first described a person's habit of telling the truth.^[2][7] From the 1660s it was also used of statements and accounts, for their agreement with the facts:^[2][7] the OED records the correspondence of a thing with external facts from 1666 and the accuracy of a statement or report from 1736.^[2] Johnson (1755) gave both senses, moral truth or honesty of report, and physical truth or the agreement of a report with fact, which he thought less proper.^[11] A truthful statement or truth itself is recorded from 1857, and is rare.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1623 – truthfulness as a quality of persons.^[2][8][10]
• 1664 – the truthfulness of a particular statement or person.^[2]
• 1666 – correspondence with external facts; exactness.^[2]
• 1671 – of veracity, truthful, trustworthy.^[2]
• 1736 – agreement of a statement or report with the facts; accuracy.^[2][4]
• 1857 – a truthful statement; a truth.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Truthfulness or honesty, especially as a lasting habit: No one doubted the veracity of the old shepherd.^[10][9][2]
2. Agreement with the facts; accuracy or precision: The veracity of the report was later confirmed.^[9][2][4]
3. (rare) Something true; a truth.^[9][4][2]

Word family

• inveracity

Related words

• veracious
• very
• verity
• verify
• verdict

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.