NODE / 0708attestedPresent-Day English

troth

TRANSLITERATION trothPRONUNCIATION /trɔːθ/

pledged fidelity, good faith, or betrothal

DATE: 12th century–today
SENSE: pledged fidelity
FAMILY: Indo-European / Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:1:troth:attested:sense:pledged-fidelity

The modern word preserves a semantic branch once shared with truth.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERcontinuationestablished

Middle English · Middle English · faith loyalty truth

trouth

truth, troth, pledged fidelity

SOUND: Modern troth continues Middle English trouth with regular English spelling and sound development.
MEANING: Pledged fidelity narrows a historical noun that also covered truth and loyalty.
CHRONOLOGY: Merriam-Webster reports noun use in the twelfth century.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
CONFIDENCE: established

Troth — Definition, Word History, and First Known UsesupportsDefinitions, Word History, and First Known Use

Supplies Middle English trouth, the fidelity senses, and twelfth-century noun horizon.

ORIGINAL ↗

Troth — American Heritage DictionarycontextHeadword etymology

Independently identifies the historical truth variant.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 688 ↗

DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES

THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP

No reviewed descendants currently reuse this node. Absence describes the graph, not the entire history of the form.

TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE

EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE

This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.

UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES: 0
REVIEWED EDGES: 0
DEEPEST PATH: 0
MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED: 0

No downstream edge has cleared review for this node. This is a graph-coverage statement, not a claim that the historical form produced nothing.

“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.

RECORDED EVIDENCE

ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE

SOURCE-REPORTEDlexicographic first useestablished

12th century

Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for troth

Century-level source report; no underlying twelfth-century object was directly inspected.

troth dossier · recorded as troth

Merriam-WebsterWITNESS RECORD ↗Troth — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use ↗

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01trothtroth · established