 Vérité was laid down at the Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard in Bordeaux in April 1903, launched on 28 May 1907, and completed in June 1908, over a year after the radically innovative British battleship HMS Dreadnought, which rendered the pre-dreadnoughts like Vérité outdated before they were completed. The ship was 133.81 meters (439 ft 0 in) long between perpendiculars and had a beam of 24.26 m (79 ft 7 in) and a full-load draft of 8.41 m (27 ft 7 in). She displaced up to 14,489 metric tons (14,260 long tons; 15,971 short tons) at full load. The ship had a crew of between 739 and 769 officers and enlisted men. Vérité was powered by three vertical triple expansion engines with twenty-two Belleville boilers. They were rated at 18,500 indicated horsepower (13,800 kW) and provided a top speed of 19 knots (35 km / h; 22 mph). Coal storage amounted to 1,800 t (1,800 long tons; 2,000 short tons).
