Truth can only mean ‘descriptive testimony free of error, bias, suggestion, obscurantism and deceit’. In other words, speech, the semantic content of which corresponds with reality.
One speaks **truthfully**, or **untruthfully **(warrantied)**, **or** honestly **or** dishonestly **(not warrantied)**. **
To be precise, one speaks honestly or dishonestly having done no due diligence, and warrantying one’s speech.
To speak truthfully requires that you have done due diligence. So you might speak honestly not having done due diligence of your speech, but not truthfully, having done due diligence of your speech. So you might give your honest opinion, but that differs from doing diligence that such an opinion survives criticism – meaning correspondence.
How do we test correspondence? In the most simple of terms, a truth statement must be:
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**categorically** consistent (non conflationary)
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**internally** consistent (logical),
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**externally** correspondent (empirical),
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**operationally** possible (existentially possible),
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**coherent** categorically, internally, externally, and operationally (consistent across all tests)
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**fully accounted **(you haven’t cherry picked cause and/or consequence)
And if you want to claim it’s ethical and moral:
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**rational**: consisting of nothing but a series of fully rational choices
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**reciprocal:** consisting of nothing other than productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges free of imposition upon others by externality.
We use the word in many, many contexts. Most of them somewhere between a convenience and a dishonesty. True, honest, logical, and good are independent concepts frequently conflated to attribute authority where it is absent.