a. Forms: see TRUTH. [f. TRUTH sb. + -LESS.] Destitute of truth (in various senses).
† 1. Lacking faith; distrustful. (In quot. app. absol. as sb.) Obs. rare–1.
c. 1200. Trin. Coll. Hom., 73. Ten þing … leten men of here scrifte,… shamfestnesse, drede, ortrowe, trewðeleas [app. gloss on ‘ortrowe’].
2. Faithless, unfaithful, perfidious. Obs. or arch.
1567. Satir. Poems Reform., iv. 84. Off Tygeris quholpis,… Ane treuthles troup les drewin me to this end.
a. 1600. Flodden F., II. (1664), 15. And turn such truthless guest to teen.
3. Untruthful, mendacious; making false statements, ‘false.’
1567. Satir. Poems Reform., iv. 41. My truethles toung my honoure defylit.
1605. Camden, Rem. (1637), 251. He prooved a truthlesse Prophet.
1888. Gd. Words, Oct., 682. The truthless look, the shuffling gait, The mind that darkly schemes.
4. Having no truth in it, as a statement, etc.; void of truth; untrue, false.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 9. These opinions are altogether truthlesse.
1660. Trial Regic. (1679), 235. I hope … that what I have said … is not Truthless but of Weight.
1850. Tait’s Mag., XVII. 715/1. Senseless and truthless clamour.
1911. Contemp. Rev., Nov., 666. Idolaters of truthless imaginations.
Hence Truthlessness.
1854. Tait’s Mag., XXI. 494. Representatives of the wit and truthlessness of our age.
1900. Morley, Cromwell, II. v. 184. The letters disclosed his truthlessness.
