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Truism

A truism is a claim which is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device.

A proposition may be a truism even if it is not a tautology, a restatement of a definition, or a theorem derived from axioms that are generally held to be true. In fact, some would say that such analytic propositions should not be regarded as truisms.

Often the word is used to disguise the fact that a proposition is really just a half-truth or an opinion, especially in rhetoric.

Examples

See also

Synthetic proposition
aphorism
axiom
banality
cliché
commonplace
dictum
fact
gospel
maxim
moral