truth [OE] This comes from the same root as *true and also originally suggested qualities of faithfulness and loyalty. Lord Byron was the first to popularize truth is stranger than fiction, in his poem Don Juan in 1823. The first verifiable instance of truth is the first casualty of war is an epigraph by the British politician Arthur Ponsonby in 1918: ‘When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.’ One of the adages of the Dutch humanist and scholar Erasmus (c.1466–1536), writing in Latin, was in vino veritas, translated as there is truth in wine, and this English version has continued in use, though the Latin form is probably more familiar. The idea itself goes back to Greek, and is attributed to the poet Alcaeus of the 6th century bc. See also plight.