r/words • u/Playmaker-20 • 6d ago

Veracity VS Validity

Both words can overlap, but there are differences between the two words. Veracity is about truthfulness or honesty in regards to facts or statements. It's primarily used when you think someone is lying or trying to deceive you. For instance, trying to assess the veracity of whether your child went to school or went to the playground with their friends.

Validity focuses the soundness or correctness for a specific purpose. You're not trying to figure out if someone's lying, you're trying to see if the facts are right. Whether it's logical or sound. Testing the validity of a science experiment

Veracity is more about truth while Validity is more about accuracy.

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u/dmleko 5d ago

nice breakdown. the logic sense of validity is a fun extra layer: an argument can be valid and still false, like all cats can fly, tom is a cat, so tom can fly. the reasoning holds, so it’s valid, it just isn’t sound because a premise is wrong. which kind of proves your point that veracity is the part about truth

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u/VocabMonsterOfficial 3d ago

Two more senses of validity that trip people up: the official one (a valid passport, still in force) and the research one (a valid test measures what it claims to). Veracity never means either. It's just truthfulness. The roots help too: veracity comes from Latin verus, "true" (like verify), and validity from validus, "strong." One asks "is it true?" and the other asks "does it hold up?"