Truism

{{Short description|Claim so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning}} {{redirect|Truisms|text-based art piece|Truisms (Jenny Holzer)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}} A '''truism''' is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of a '''falsism'''.<ref>{{cite web |access-date=10 March 2010 |work=Webster's Online Dictionary |title=Definition: truism |url= http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/truism?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=truism&sa=Search#922 |quote=An undoubted or self-evident truth; a statement which is pliantly true; a proposition needing no proof or argument; — opposed to falsism. |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110628224016/http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/truism?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=truism&sa=Search#922 |archive-date=28 June 2011}}</ref>

In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditions for a proposition may be regarded as a truism.<ref>{{Cite web |date=10 March 2014 |title=Truism - Definition and Examples of Truism |url= https://literarydevices.net/truism/ |access-date=31 August 2021 |website=Literary Devices }}</ref> An example of such a sentence would be "Under appropriate conditions, the sun rises." Without contextual support{{spaced ndash}}a statement of what those appropriate conditions are{{spaced ndash}}the sentence is true but incontestable.<ref>{{Cite web |title=truism |url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/truism |access-date=31 August 2021 |website=Dictionary.Cambridge.org}}</ref>

Lapalissades, such as "If he were not dead, he would still be alive", are considered to be truisms.

== See also == {{Wiktionary|truism}} {{div col|colwidth=20em}} * Aphorism * Axiom * Cliché * Contradiction * Dictum * Dogma * Figure of speech * Maxim * Moral * Platitude * Synthetic proposition * Tautology {{div col end}}

== References == {{reflist}}

Category:Rhetoric Category:Paremiology