faith

Meanings

Noun

• A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.
• A conviction about abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.
• A religious or spiritual belief system.
• An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.
• Credibility or truth.

Adverb

• Alternative of in faith

Related

Similar words

• belief, confidence, trust, conviction
• religion

Origin

• From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidēs. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also the word for "belief."
• Old French had as a final devoiced allophone of from lenited Latin ; this eventually fell silent in the 12th century. The -th of the Middle English forms is most straightforwardly accounted for as a direct borrowing of a French . However, it has also been seen as arising from alteration of a French form with -d under influence of English abstract nouns in the suffix -th (e.g. truth, ruth, health, etc.), or as a recharacterisation of a French form like fay, fey, fei with the same suffix, thus making the word equivalent to fay + -th.