true
/tɹuː/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.40 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Conforming to a rule or pattern; exact; accurate.
adj
Of the state in Boolean logic that indicates an affirmative or positive result.
adj
adj
Example Sentences
- "This is a true story."
- "The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Now she had come to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure to behold."
- "The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. No one queried it. It was in the classic pattern of human weakness, mean and embarrassing and sad."
- "At any rate, this does tend to put in truer perspective the symbolic claim placed by Herodotus in the mouth of 'the Athenians'—also Ionians—in 480/479, that the fact of being Greek was constituted in essential part by 'same-bloodedness'."
- "Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.[…]One thing that is true, though, is that murder rates have fallen over the centuries, as policing has spread and the routine carrying of weapons has diminished. Modern society may not have done anything about war. But peace is a lot more peaceful."
- "As the is it gold is it blue? dress moment proved all too well, dividing opinion on social media is really not that hard. And, when it comes to GymTok, that couldn't be truer."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *drewH-der. Proto-Germanic *triwwiz Proto-West Germanic *triuwī Old English trīewe Middle English trewe English true From Middle English treowe, trew, trewe, triwe, true, trwe, from Old English trēowe, trīewe (“faithful, true”), from Proto-Germanic *triwwiz (“faithful, true”), from pre-Germanic *drewh₂yos, from Proto-Indo-European *drewH- (“firm, hard, true”). Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian trjou (“honest”), Alemannic German trüüw (“loyal”), Dutch trouw (“loyal, true”), German treu (“loyal, true”), Luxembourgish trei (“loyal”), Danish tryg (“safe, secure”), Faroese and Icelandic tryggur (“faithful, loyal; safe”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish trygg (“safe, secure”), Gothic 𐍄𐍂𐌹𐌲𐌲𐍅𐍃 (triggws, “true; faithful, loyal”); also Irish dearbh (“sure”), Old Prussian druwis (“faith”), Ancient Greek δροόν (droón, “firm”)), extension of *dóru (“tree”) (possibly also Proto-Slavic *sъdorvъ (“healthy”) from the same root). More at tree. For the semantic development, compare Latin robustus (“tough”) from robur (“red oak”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
truer (comparative)
more true (comparative)
truest (superlative)
most true (superlative)
tru (alternative, Internet)
troo (alternative, nonstandard)
tr00 (alternative, Internet)
trew (alternative, obsolete)
trues (present, singular)
trueing (participle, present)
truing (participle, present)
trued (participle, past)