a. [f. L. vērāc-, vērax according to truth, that speaks the truth + -IOUS. Cf. next.]
1. Habitually speaking or disposed to speak the truth; observant of the truth; truthful.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm. (1686), II. 63. That God is good, veracious, and faithfull.
1778. Johnson, L. P., Swift (1781), III. 409. The credit of the writers, both undoubtedly veracious.
1820. Shelley, Hymn Merc., lxii. I am a most veracious person, and Totally unacquainted with untruth.
1839. Dickens, Nickleby, xxviii. The testimony of the two veracious and competent witnesses.
1864. Bowen, Logic, xiii. 431. A witness is presumed to be veracious in this case, in proportion as his love of truth is already established from others.
2. Characterized by veracity, truthfulness or honesty; conforming to truth; true, accurate.
1777. Johnson, Lett. to Mrs. Thrale, 27 Oct. Is not my soul laid open in these veracious pages?
1802–12. Bentham, Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827), V. 718. The testimony which has served as the instrument of the mischief, has been … veracious.
1868. W. R. Greg, Lit. & Soc. Judgm., 400. He … showed His back but not His face to Moses; and dictated the veracious narrative of Balaam and his ass.
a. 1871. De Morgan, Budget Parad. (1872), 250. That it was the most veracious of books written by the most honest of men.
3. That estimates or judges truly or correctly.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, I. v. The young ardent soul that enters on this world … with veracious insight,… will find this world a very mad one.
Hence Veraciously adv., Veraciousness.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. III. vii. 405. In Shakspeare, it was fiction, to lay the murder of Duncan, at a place different from Bothgowanan, where the Chronicle has veraciously fixed it.
1860. I. Taylor, Sp. Hebr. Poetry (1873), 63. The veraciousness of the record.
1879. Morley, Burke, v. 97. Burke’s habitual veraciousness.
1905. Athenæum, 25 Nov., 719/1. How diplomatists plot … is veraciously related.
