troth
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /tɹəʊθ/
ipa: /tɹɒθ/
ipa: /tɹoʊθ/
ipa: /tɹɔθ/
rhymes: -əʊθ
rhymes: -ɒθ
rhymes: -oʊθ
rhymes: -ɔθ
Forms: form: troths
Etymology: From Middle English troth, trothe, trouthe, trowthe, a variant of treuth, treuthe, treouthe (“allegiance, fidelity, faithfulness, loyalty; oath, pledge, promise; betrothal or marriage vow; betrothal; honour, integrity; holiness, righteousness; confidence, trust; creed, faith; fact, reality, truth”), from Old English trēowþ, trīewþ (“truth, veracity; faith, fidelity; covenant, pledge”), from Proto-Germanic *triwwiþō (“contract; promise”), equivalent to true + -th (abstract nominal suffix). See more at truth.
Senses: examples: text: By my troth I care not, a man can die but once, we owe God a death, [...]
ref: c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth, […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
text: And by my faith and troth I have a good part of a mind to have thee beaten for thine insolence!
ref: 1883, Howard Pyle, “The Shooting-match at Nottingham Town”, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC, part first, page 32:
text: Hagen of Troneg now foully broke his troth to Siegfried.
ref: 1909, “Adventure XVI: How Siegfried was Slain”, in Daniel Bussier Shumway, transl., The Nibelungenlied: Translated from the Middle High German with an Introductory Sketch and Notes (The Riverside Literature Series), Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC, page 131:
glosses: An oath, pledge, plight, or promise.
examples: text: ...I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;...
ref: 1850, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto XXVII:
text: It follows, as a natural consequence, that the two who stood alone in the new faith, [...] should, finally, make mutual confession of the passion that had surprised both, in the early pride of man and womanhood; should exchange rings, and plight troths where the pleasaunce joined the river, as young lovers do still probably exchange rings and plight troths, by the old Cheshire river.
ref: 1872 June, Mar Travers, “The Lord of Misrule”, in The Nautical Magazine for 1872: A Journal of Papers on Subjects Connected with Maritime Affairs, volume XLI (New Series), London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., […]; and J. D. Potter, […], →OCLC, pages 506–507:
text: Vendemer’s sole fortune is his genius, and he and Paule, who confessed to an answering flame, plighted their troth like a pair of young rustics or (what comes for French people to the same thing) young Anglo-Saxons.
ref: 1893, Henry James, “Collaboration”, in The Wheel of Time; Collaboration; Owen Wingrave, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers publishers, →OCLC, page 110:
glosses: An oath, pledge, plight, or promise.
A pledge or promise to marry someone.
examples: text: I did, therefore, what an honest man should; restored the maiden her troth, and departed the country, in the service of my king.
ref: 1826, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter XIV, in The Last of the Mohicans; a Narrative of 1757. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea— […], →OCLC, page 248:
glosses: An oath, pledge, plight, or promise.
The state of being thus pledged; betrothal, engagement.
examples: text: [John] Martiall, much like to Virgil's Sinon, (of whom he took a precedent, to make an artificial lie,) for three leaves together, in his preface, telleth undoubted trothes; to the end that the falsehoods, which, foolishly, (God wot,) he doth infer, may have the more credit.
ref: 1565, [James Calfhill], “The Preface to the Readers”, in An Avnswere to the Treatise of the Crosse: […], imprinted at London: By Henry Denham, for Lucas Harryson, →OCLC; republished as Richard Gibbings, editor, An Answer to John Martiall’s Treatise of the Cross (Parker Society for the Publication of the Works of the Fathers and Early Writers of the Reformed English Church (series); 11), Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, 1846, →OCLC, page 48:
text: I can̄ot lerne Banister's confession upon the racke as yet; but he was put to the racke for denying of moost manifest trothes at the first.
ref: 1571 September 21, Hugh Fitz William, quotee, “Cabala, sive Scrinia Sacra: Mysteries of State and Government, in Letters of Illustrious Persons and Great Ministers of State, as well Foreign and Domestick, in the Reigns of King Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles, […]”, in Henry Southern, Nicholas Harris Nicolas, editors, The Retrospective Review, and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine, volume II, part I (Second Series), London: Baldwin and Cradock […], published 1828, →OCLC, page 39:
text: The suddaine recouerie of my distressed Maister, whome latelie you left in a Traunce (Most excellent Princes!) hath made me at one tyme the hastie messenger of three trothes, your miracle, his mending, & my mirthe.
ref: 1592, “Masques: Performed before Queen Elizabeth. […]”, in John Nichols, editor, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth. […] In Three Volumes, volume III, London: Printed by and for John Nichols and Son, […], published 1823, →OCLC, part III (The Second Daies Woorke where the Chaplayne Maketh This Relation. …), page 211:
text: Troth but it was fitting speech for the moonlight: moonlight, the bright and clear, but the cold—which, unlike the sun, opens no flowers, and ripens no fruit.
ref: 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 19:
glosses: Truth; something true.
Derived terms: word: betroth
word: betrothal
word: tell-troth
word: trothless
word: trothplight
word: trothplighted
Related terms: truth