The ultimate source of truth is uncertain, but the best guess going is that it comes from Proto Indo European dru, which meant “oak”. From ancient times, the oak was a symbol of strength and faithfulness. The root dru is also the source of tree, truce, troth, tryst, trough, endure, dryad, and (almost certainly) druid.

Dru descended into Proto Germanic as trewwjaz, “trustworthy”, and Old English as triewe, the old form of true. Truth is the nominal form of the adjective true. The final “th” is an ancient suffix indicating that it is a noun (compare, e.g., wide vs. width, born vs. birth, etc.).

Truth and all of its close relatives start out with the very strong directed energy of “tr”; for true, truth, and truce, the energy also “goes with the flow” — presumably implying that for something to be true, it must be in accord with reality’s flow.

Thanks to Jessa for suggesting this word of the day, and to Slade for suggesting the awesome new image motif.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 4:24 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.