trothful

English

Etymology

From Middle English trouþeful, equivalent to troth +‎ -ful.[1][2] Piecewise doublet of truthful.

Adjective

trothful (comparative more trothful, superlative most trothful)

  1. (now archaic and somewhat rare) Faithful, loyal, trustworthy.
    • 1577, John Grange, “A Song of a Louer, wherein He Shewes His Loue towarde His Lady”, in The Golden Aphroditis: A Pleasant Discourse, […], London: […] Henry Bynneman, →OCLC, signature R, recto:
      Of trothfull troth hope biddes me ſay, / That loue hath hedgde me in hir hande.
    • 1823 January 18, “The Romaunt of Llewellyn; (Continued.) Canto I.—Part II.”, in The Manchester Iris: A Literary and Scientific Miscellany, […], volume II, number 51, Manchester: […] Henry Smith, […], →OCLC, stanza XXIV:6, page 20, column 1:
      Love as trothful, grief as true, / As a poor broken heart e’er knew!
    • 1861, Neville Temple [pseudonym; Julian Fane]; Edward Trevor [pseudonym; Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton], Tannhäuser; or, The Battle of the Bards. A Poem., London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 13:
      [T]rothful men, who once / Look’d in his lordly, luminous eyes, and scann’d / His sinewous frame, compact of pliant power, / Aver he was the fairest-favour’d knight / That ever, in the light of ladies’ looks, / Made gay these goodly halls.
    • 1979 May, David Lyon, “Marx and the meaning of man: David Lyon considers Karl Marx’s understanding of humanity”, in John Capon, editor, Third Way, volume 3, number 5, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 7, column 2:
      The marriage relationship, another of God’s ‘frameworks’, was intended to be characterised by particular kinds of responses. The response is best summed up by the old English word ‘troth’. This, a variant of ‘truth’, encompasses in one word the idea of faithfulness, honesty, openness, humility and love – all of which are necessary to marriage. Without the trothful framework, the marriage will have a tendency to imbalance, unfreedom and fragility.
    • 1994, John Tyndall, editor, Spearhead, London: Nationalist Centre, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9, column 3:
      Trothful homosexual relationships are similar in every way to heterosexual ones, save for procreation.
    • 2005 December 5, Alan Storkey, “Resolving the gay issue”, in Church of England Newspaper, London, →ISSN, →OCLC; republished on Scribd‎[1], archived from the original on 17 June 2019:
      Moreover, trothful homosexual relationships can have things that are good—love, non-judgementalism, friendship and companionship, and we can have very bad experiences with Christian heterosexuals without judging their faith. […] Marriage as troth is the normative model for adult humanity.

References

  1. ^ “treuthful, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “trothful, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
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