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forsooth

ADV · English

Experimental / limited support

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Experimental coverage — measured below Partial on the number of recorded words, definitions, translations, word forms and pronunciation. Treat entries as evidence to check; meanings may be incomplete.

English is Experimental in Words. Support is measured, not declared: a language reaches Partial only when every measure meets its threshold, and a measure that has not been taken does not count. The development corpus holds 60 source-backed words in English. What is shown may be incomplete, and pronunciation audio, generated forms and generated examples are not offered.

  1. Definition: Used as an intensifier, often ironic: indeed, really, truthfully.

    archaic · not-comparable · poetic

    No translation has been attempted for this sense.

    • Near-synonyms: true that, facts Usage example — not an attested quotation.
    • A fit man, forsooth, to governe a realme! a. 1628 (date written), John Hayward, The Life, and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press, and J. Lichfield at Oxford?] for Iohn Partridge, […], published 1630, →OCLC:
    • [F]or certes, ſayes he, / I haue already choſen my officer, and what was he? / Forſooth, a great Arithmeticion, [...] c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. […] (First Quarto), London: […] N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 1:
    • ‘Saint forsooth!’ said ill-natured Mrs. Brady. 1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “My Pedigree and Family.—Undergo the Influence of the Tender Passion.”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1856, →OCLC:
    • The four boys pumped up their hate to hissing steam. Harmless, quotha. Innocent, forsooth. 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 596:
    • Her eyes widened. She squeaked a bit. "Don't tell me she caught you bending again?" "Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing-table. You and your singing," I said, and I'm not sure I didn't add the word "Forsooth!" Her eyes widened a bit further, and she squeaked another squeak. 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

No paradigm has been compiled for this word yet.

Etymology: From Middle English forsothe, forsoþe, for sothe, from Old English for sōþ (“truly, for certain, forsooth”), equivalent to for (“for, by”) + sooth (“truth”).

No related word is recorded for this word.