Authenticity

How to spell authenticity

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce authenticity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does authenticity mean?

1. nounThe quality of being genuine, real, or true to its claimed origin or nature.

Authenticity in a sentence

• The gallery hired an expert to verify the authenticity of the painting.

• Customers praised the restaurant for the authenticity of its regional cooking.

Where does authenticity come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek authentikos, meaning 'original, genuine, principal', which was built on authentes, a person who acts on their own authority or even, in its earliest sense, one who does a thing with their own hand. Late Latin took this in as authenticus, and it passed through Old French as autentique before settling into English as 'authentic' in the late fourteenth century, originally describing something that carried real authority or was entitled to belief. The abstract noun 'authenticity' followed later, by the seventeenth century, naming the quality of being what something claims to be. Over time the meaning widened from legal and documentary genuineness to the modern sense of emotional or personal sincerity. The Greek root is also visible in the word 'author', since an author is literally one whose own hand produced the work, and that shared ancestry helps explain the 'auth' opening. The chief spelling trap is the soft 'c' before the suffix: it sounds like an 's' but is written with a 'c', and the unstressed vowels around it offer no help.

How the word is built

• authentic (genuine, from Greek authentikos: original, real)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a quality or state)