Truism

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A self-evident or obvious truth.

    "It is a truism that the people who attend a rally for President Trump more than two years before he’s on the ballot again are generally strong supporters of President Trump."

  2. 2
    an obvious truth wordnet
  3. 3
    A banality or cliché.

    "After a little decent sorrow had been put forth for the late "severe affliction," joined with some weariful truisms about resignation to the will of Providence, the rest of the epistle was filled up with reproofs about her ladyship's extraordinary and improper conduct in setting off without his consent!"

Synonyms

All synonyms
platitudea priori truthabstractionadageaphorismapophthegm

Example

More examples

"To say that technology changes rapidly is to utter a truism."

Etymology

From true + -ism.

Related phrases

self evidentsomething true

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.