💻 Like true (code) 🤔 Seems true

truthy

9.1

A value that counts as yes in an if statement

adjective
/ˈtruːθi/

Specialized

: verdadero

Empty strings are not truthy in most programming languages.

Examples

You should check if the variable is truthy before using it in your code.
In JavaScript, any non-zero number is considered truthy.
In JavaScript, the number 1 is considered truthy in conditional statements.
The string 'hello' is truthy in many programming languages.
In programming, a non-empty string is considered truthy and will evaluate as true in a condition.
If a variable contains a number greater than zero, it is treated as truthy in the boolean context.
The boolean expression will return true because the provided input is truthy instead of false.

Compounds

truthy statement

Literature

8.3

A statement that sounds believable but may not be real

Surface Forms

truthy positive

Morphology

truthy = truth (semi-transparent) = truth + y

Formed by the productive suffix -y on 'truth', but the programming sense is a specialized extension ('evaluates as true') that may not be obvious to general learners.

Etymology

Truthy is made from truth and the ending -y, which means 'like' or 'having' that quality. Programmers started using this word to name values that a computer treats 'as true' when it checks them. So a truthy value is one that behaves 'as true' in code.