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PlainSpell

faithful

/ˈfeɪθ.fl̩/adjective, noun

faithful is an adjective meaning “Loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-I-T-H-F-U-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears 13 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does faithful mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause.

    My dog is very faithful: he doesn't like to be petted by anybody else.

  2. 2

    Having faith.

  3. 3

    Reliable; worthy of trust.

    My servant is very faithful.

  4. 4

    Consistent with reality.

    I would consider that a very faithful reproduction.

  5. 5

    Engaging in sexual relations only with one's spouse or long-term sexual partner.

    They had been faithful to each other all of their married life.

  6. 6

    Injective in specific contexts, e.g. of representations in representation or functors in category theory.

  7. 7

    Of a module, whose annihilator is zero.

noun

  1. 1

    The practicing members of a religion or followers of a cause.

    The faithful pray five times a day.

  2. 2

    Someone or something that is faithful or reliable.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce faithful?

  • /ˈfeɪθ.fl̩/

Faithful has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-faithful.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of faithful

  • more faithful comparative
  • most faithful superlative
  • faithfuls plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is faithful?

Faithful appears 13 times per million words in written English, the 6,047th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Faithful in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchfidèle, loyal (loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause)
Germantreu, loyal, anhänglich, treu ergeben, zuverlässig, getreu (loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause)
Portuguesefiel, leal (loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause), crente (having faith)
Spanishfiel (loyal; adhering firmly to person or cause)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does faithful come from?

From Middle English feithful, equivalent to faith + -ful.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).