Corresponding tofalse +-ity. FromMiddle Frenchfausseté,Old Frenchfalseté, fromLate Latinfalsitas, fromLatinfalsus.
falsity (countable anduncountable,pluralfalsities)
- (countable) Something that isfalse; anuntrueassertion.
The belief that the world is flat is afalsity.
- (uncountable) The characteristic of being untrue.
Thefalsity of that statement is easily proven.
1949,George Orwell,Nineteen Eighty-Four[1], Part Two, Chapter 9:The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling offalsity and hence of guilt.
- Falsehood,Falseness, Falsity;untruth,fabrication,fiction. Instances may be quoted in abundance from old authors to show that the first three words are often strictly synonymous; but the modern tendency has been decidedly in favor of separating them,falsehood standing for the concrete thing, an intentional lie;falseness, for the quality of being guiltily false or treacherous: as, he is justly despised for hisfalseness to his oath; andfalsity, for the quality of being false without blame: as, thefalsity of reasoning. — TheCentury Dictionary, 1911.
characteristic of being untrue
- Noah Webster (1828) “falsity”, inAn American Dictionary of the English Language: […], volumeI (A–I), New York, N.Y.: […] S. Converse; printed by Hezekiah Howe […],→OCLC.
- “falsity”, inWebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.:G. & C. Merriam,1913,→OCLC.
- “falsity”, inDictionary.com Unabridged,Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
- Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
- Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)
