I'm Not So Sure

On Friday my wife and I were talking (it happens every so often) and I used the word certitude. She asked “Why certitude rather than certainty?” I tried to explain my understanding of the difference between the two words, but was uncertain enough to cause me to head to the dictionary and see. Lo, and behold, I found not only the answer but another one of those paragraphs in my dictionary that explain the subtle differences between words.

Here’s what the New World Dictionary of the American Language (Second College Edition) had to say:

Certainty suggests a firm, settled belief or positiveness in the truth of something; certitude is something distinguished from the preceding as implying an absence of objective proof, hence suggestion unsassailable blind faith; assurance suggests confidence, but not necessarily positiveness, usually in something that is yet to happen; conviction suggests a being convinced because of satisfactory reasons or proof and sometimes implies earlier doubt.

Certainty is a noun that came into Middle English as certainte (although etymonline.com spells it certeinte) from the Old French word certainete. (Etymonline.com says it further derived from the Latin or Vulgar Latin certanitatem.) In the 1300s it was spelled certeynte and originally referred to a pledge or surety. It took until the middle 1400s to add the meaning we have for it today.

Certitude is also a noun that came to Middle English and Old French from Low Latin, from the word certitudo. It arrived in the early 1400s, and etymonline.com adds that the Low Latin word comes from the Latin word certus.

Assurance also came from Old French, in the late 1400s. The Old French word was asseurance, and like certainty it originally was a pledge or promise. According to etymonline.com it had a negative connotation in the 18th century, with a suggestion of impudence or presumption. It is defined as “the state of being assured,” (don’t you love definitions that use another form of the same word?) “sureness, confidence, certainty.”

Conviction comes from the mid-1400s, from the Low Latin Ecclesiastical use of the word convictio, which meant proof or demonstration. It is defined as a strong belief. Originally meaning proof, it wasn’t until the 1690s that it developed the meaning of the mental state of being convinced, and (again according to etymonline.com) it was in 1841 that it first was used to mean a belief.

So what’s the shade of meaning difference? Certainty can provide proof of the belief; certitude doesn’t have the proof but is still sure of the belief. Assurance has more uncertainty, and is a little stronger than confidence or conviction. Conviction is a holding strongly to a belief in the absence of any proof, in my opinion.

At least, that’s my contention…