faith

Meaning

1. A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.
2. A conviction about abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.
3. A religious or spiritual belief system.
4. An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.
5. (obsolete) Credibility or truth.

belief

trust

religious belief

propriety

will-power

reason for

opinion, supposition

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/feɪθ/

From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidem. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also the word for "belief." Old French had [θ] as a final devoiced allophone of /ð/ from lenited Latin /d/; this eventually fell silent in the 12th century. The -th of the Middle English forms is most straightforwardly accounted for as a direct borrowing of a French [θ]. However, it has also been seen as arising from alteration of a French form with -d under influence of English abstract nouns in the suffix -th (e.g. truth, ruth, health, etc.), or as a recharacterisation of a French form like fay, fey, fei with the same suffix, thus making the word equivalent to fay + -th.

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