Also 8 trueism. [f. TRUE a. + -ISM.] A self-evident truth, esp. one of slight importance; a statement so obviously true as not to require discussion.
1708. Swift, Remarks Bk., vii. Wks. 1841, II. 190/2. The title of this chapter [is] a truism.
1757. Mrs. Griffith, Lett. Henry & Frances (1767), I. 135. I have … often illustrated the latter part of this trueism.
1817. Malthus, Popul., III. App. 338. Truisms … of the same kind as the assertion that man cannot live without food.
1880. L. Stephen, Pope, ii. 25. Maxims, some of which strike us as palpable truisms.
b. (without article) Truistic statement.
1812. Shelley, Lett. to Eliz. Hitchener, 20 Jan. You … tell me truism when you egotize at all.
1861. Max Müller, Chips (1880), I. xiii. 312. The fear of truism in our modern writers.
Hence Truismatic a. (rare) = next.
1849. Eclectic Rev., Dec., 654. The author admits that the Romanists viewed the change with abhorrence, and adds, with truismatic tameness, that it did not wholly satisfy the fathers of nonconformity.
1877. Harrisburg Independent, 21 March, 3/1. ‘Like people, like priest,’ is a truismatic aphorism.
