The noun sooth, pronounced /suːθ/, is now archaic and means ‘fact’,‘reality’ and ‘truth’. Its legacy persists in the words soothe /suːð/, and soothsayer meaning someone who sees the truth, a synonym of fortune teller and the French loanword clairvoyant.
In Shakespeare's plays, sooth is often used with the verb say and in the expression in sooth whereas truth is often used with the verb tell
From Shakespeare's Macbeth
Sergeant:
If I say sooth, I must report they were
As cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they
Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:
(Act I, Scene 2)
Banquo:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
(Act I, Scene 3)
Macbeth:
[Aside] Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.—I thank you, gentlemen.
(Act I, Scene 3)
Macbeth:
If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:'…
(Act V, Scene 5)
Merchant of Venice
Antonio:
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
(Act I, Scene 1)
Etymonline tells me that truth meaning "something that is true" was first recorded in the mid-14 century. In the 1560s, truth came to mean "accuracy, correctness". Meanwhile, the noun sooth is dated 900 and was derived from soð.
- I would like to know what difference in meaning, if any, was there between sooth and truth?
- Why did “sooth” become obsolete, and when was it eventually overtaken by “truth”?