faith
Meanings
- 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.
- Alternative form of in faith (“really, truly”).
- Ellipsis of by my faith.
- A female given name from English.
- A surname, also used as a stage name.
- A place in the United States:
- An unincorporated community in Norman County, Minnesota.
- An unincorporated community in Miller County, Missouri.
- A town in Rowan County, North Carolina.
- A minor city in Meade County, South Dakota.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidem. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also a word for belief. * Old French had [θ] as a final devoiced allophone of /ð/ from lenited Latin /d/; 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 [θ]. 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 recharacterization of a French form like fay, fey, fei with the same suffix. Compare Champenois fiate, fiaite, showing the same preservation of the final consonant.