Sunday Word: Certitude

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

certitude [sur-ti-tood, -tyood]
noun:
1 a Absolute certainty or conviction that something is the case.

2 Something that someone firmly believes is true.

3 Something that is certain

Examples:

The Hindu texts operate from a platform of skepticism, not a springboard of certitude. (Shashi Tharoor, How Hinduism Has Persisted for 4,000 Years, WSJ 2019)

He grinned viciously, for the certitude of his bidding had at last shaken the king. (Jack London, Lost Face)

I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day. and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself. (Nikola Tesla, statement on the Teslascope, which was published by Time magazine in their July 20, 1931 issue celebrating Tesla's 75th birthday)

With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of the jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had hitherto given him, that he was in his native place. (George Eliot, Silas Marner)

There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.
All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste
your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done. (Albert Camus, The Plague)

Origin:

Late Middle English from late Latin certitudo, from certus 'certain'. (Oxford English Dictionary)

'certainty, complete assurance,' early 15c, from Middle French certitude 'certainty' (16c), from Late Latin certitudinem (nominative certitudo) 'that which is certain,' from Latin certus 'sure, certain' (Online Etymology Dictionary)