Truthfully
adverbIn a way that tells the truth or accurately reflects the facts.
How to spell truthfully
10 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce truthfully
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does truthfully mean?
- adverbIn a way that tells the truth or accurately reflects the facts.
Truthfully in a sentence
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She answered every question on the form truthfully and signed it.
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The witness described the accident truthfully to the investigators.
Where does truthfully come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word is built on truth, which comes from the Old English trēowth, meaning faithfulness, loyalty, or the quality of being faithful; that noun was formed from trēowe, the ancestor of modern true. The original sense leaned heavily on personal fidelity and keeping faith rather than on factual accuracy, and only later did truth settle into its modern meaning of agreement with the facts. To this base English added two native suffixes: -ful, meaning full of, and the adverb-forming -ly, producing first the adjective truthful and then the adverb truthfully. The same trēowe root also gives us trust, troth (as in betrothed), and the trusty companion of old stories. The spelling trap lies in the join: writers must keep the full -ful with a single l, then add -ly, so the seam reads truth-ful-ly with two l letters meeting at the boundary.
How the word is built
- truth (from Old English trēowth: faithfulness, fidelity)
- -ful (full of)
- -ly (adverb suffix)
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