verity

Borrowing from Anglo-Norman verité or Middle French verité, from Old French verité, from Latin vēritās, from the adjective vērus (“true”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɛɹɪti/

verity (countable and uncountable, plural verities)

1. (archaic) Truth, fact or reality, especially an enduring religious or ethical truth.
   • 1602 : William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act V scene 2

     [...] but in the verity of extolment

     I take him to be a soul of great article and his infusion

     of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of

     him, his semblable in his mirror, and who else would

     trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.

   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.3:

     For the assured truth of things is derived from the principles of knowledg, and causes which determine their verities.

2. A true statement; an established doctrine.
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 290-1:

     Absolutist verities were not only being challenged in more systematic and more daring forms than hitherto; the parameters of political debate were also being widened by both government and its critics.

• veritable
• veracious