Truthful

How to spell truthful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce truthful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does truthful mean?

1. adjectiveHonest and inclined to tell the truth, or corresponding accurately to the facts.

Truthful in a sentence

• The auditor wanted a truthful account of the missing funds.

• She gave a truthful answer even though it embarrassed her.

Where does truthful come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English noun 'truth', which descends from the Old English 'triewth' or 'treowth', meaning faithfulness, fidelity, or a solemn pledge. That noun grew from 'treowe', the Old English ancestor of the modern adjective 'true', tracing back to a Germanic root tied to the ideas of firmness, loyalty, and being trustworthy. The familiar suffix '-ful', also of Old English origin, simply means 'full of' or 'characterised by', the same element seen in 'careful' and 'hopeful'. The combined form 'truthful', meaning given to telling the truth or corresponding to fact, appeared in English in the 1500s and 1600s, with its 'honest' sense becoming firmly established by the eighteenth century. A useful spelling reminder is that it is plainly 'truth' plus 'ful' with a single 'l', so the 'th' of the root is preserved intact and the suffix never doubles its 'l'.

How the word is built

• truth (from Old English triewth: faithfulness, fidelity)
• -ful (adjective suffix: full of, characterised by)