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''forsooth'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125123911-00-⌔

forsooth - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adverb

forsooth (not comparable)

  • (archaic or poetic) Used as an intensifier, often ironic: indeed, really, truthfully.
    • ✤ Synonyms: in point of fact, in truth, to tell the truth; see also Thesaurus: actually
    • ✤ Near-synonyms: true that, facts
    • ✤ A fit man, forsooth, to governe a realme!1
    • ✤ [F]or certes, ſayes he,/I haue already choſen my officer, and what was he?/Forſooth, a great Arithmeticion, […]2
    • ✤ ‘Saint forsooth!’ said ill-natured Mrs. Brady.3
    • ✤ The four boys pumped up their hate to hissing steam. Harmless, quotha. Innocent, forsooth.4
    • ✤ 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.5

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /fɔɹˈsuθ/, enPR: fôr-sōōth′
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -uːθ

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 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: ↩

  2. 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: ↩

  3. 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: ↩

  4. 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 596: ↩

  5. 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC: ↩

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