Sincerity

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This article is about the virtue. For the phrase "Yours sincerely", see Valediction.

For other uses, see Sincerity (disambiguation) and Sincere (disambiguation).

A silhouette drawing of a woman saying what she thinks

Sincerity is the virtue of one who communicates and acts in accordance with the entirety of their feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and desires in a manner that is honest and genuine.^[1]

Sincerity in one's actions (as opposed to one's communications) may be called "earnestness".

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary and most scholars state that sincerity from sincere is derived from the Latin sincerus meaning clean, pure, sound.

Sincerus may have once meant "one growth" (not mixed),

from sin- (one) and crescere (to grow).^[2]

Crescere is cognate with "Ceres," the goddess of grain, as in "cereal".^[3]

According to the American Heritage Dictionary,^[4] the Latin word sincerus is derived

from the Indo-European root sm̥kēros, itself derived

from the zero-grade of sem (one) and

the suffixed, lengthened e-grade of ker (grow), generating the underlying meaning of one growth, hence pure, clean*.