[RandomThoughts3]

It’s interesting to notice that etymologically speaking the French and English words have completely different roots and therefore evokes slightly different ideas which are lost in translation.

Trust shares its root with truth. It’s directly related to believing in the veracity of something.

Confiance comes from the Latin confidere which means depositing something to someone while having faith they are going to take good care of it. The accent is on the faith in the relationship, not the truthfulness. The tension between trust and control doesn’t really exist in French. You can have faith but still check.

[mathgeek]

> Trust shares its root with truth. It’s directly related to believing in the veracity of something.

Would you mind sharing your reference on that? All the etymology sites I rely on seem to place the root in words that end up at "solid" or "comfort".

[RandomThoughts3]

Definitely and that’s not incompatible with what I’m saying.

You are indeed looking far back to the Proto-Indo-European where words are very different and sometimes a bit of guesses.

If you look at the whole tree, you will see that both trust, truth and true share common Germanic roots (that’s pretty obvious by looking at them) which is indeed linked with words meaning “solid” and then “promise, contract”.

What’s interesting is that the root is shared between “truth” and “trust” while in French it’s not (vérité from veritas vs confiance from confere).