• veritable •
Pronunciation: ver-it-êbêl • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Real, genuine, true, properly so-called.
Notes: Veritable comes to us equipped with an adverb, veritably, and a noun, veritability. We also have an old noun, verity "truth", which produced a Puritan Christian name, Verity, the name of Verity Hunt, the murder victim in the Miss Marple mystery Nemesis by Agatha Christie.
In Play: Any English word containing the letters v-e-r must have some relation to truth: "Matilda hadn't seen her granddaughter for such a long time she had to guess at the girl's veritable height." Of course, truth is a matter of opinion: "There was a storm that night; a veritable hurricane had gushed in with heavy rains and high winds."
Word History: This word is another snitched by English from French, this time Old French veritable "true, real, valid". The Old French word was based on verite "truth, sincerity" from Latin veritas "truth, truthfulness". Veritas is the noun accompanying verus "true", origin of English very. Latin inherited the root of this word from Proto-Indo-European wer-ê- "true, trustworthy", which also went into the making of English warlock, the male witch. In Old English it was wærloga "oath-breaker", composed of wær "oath, pledge" + loga "liar". Wær, of course, came from the same PIE source as Latin verus.
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